Bible Treasury: Volume 1

This is truly a millennial psalm, in the form of a dialog of which there are many instances in the Hebrew writings (Psa. 91; 53:4). It contains just an acknowledgment of Jehovah's title to the earth—He founded it and established it; it is His and all that it contains. Then follows the question “Who shall ascend into the hill of Jehovah?” &c. The answer is, he of clean hands and a pure heart, free from idolatry and profaneness. Such shall be blessed; and such is the generation to come. But when the godly remnant shall thus appear, another appears at their head, the suffering Messiah, the Shepherd of Israel, the King of glory entering by the everlasting doors. Who is he, this King of glory? Jehovah strong and mighty, Jehovah mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O ye gates. Jehovah of hosts, He is the King of glory, erst a reproach of men and despised of the people, yea forsaken of His God on the cross. What a discovery for Israel!

On Mr. Elliott's Apocalyptic Interpretation

My Dear Brother In Christ, I have read enough of the “Horæ Apocalyptiæ,” to convince myself of its unsoundness in general, The foundation principles of interpretation are found succinctly laid down in chap. 5 (vol. 1); the remainder being simply an examination into the events of history, with a view to apply and illustrate them. It is not therefore necessary to follow him through all these statements, the leading theory being the most material point to be attended to. For even admitting that the historical facts accord with the principles advocated, this would not be sufficient. Such tallying may be allowed as secondary evidence of that which has been previously demonstrated upon independent grounds. But Mr. E. does not thus advance them, (i.e., not upon proofs derived from scripture only, irrespectively of uninspired records). His mode of procedure is a “petitio principii.” He assumes his principles, and then proceeds to try and show the extreme probability by an appeal to history. This method should be carefully used at all times, when the meaning of the Holy Ghost is the inquiry; and perhaps not at all, except in some point of detail, and where no fundamental question is involved. To apply it to the subject-matter of the Holy Ghost in the very basis and frame-work of prophetic truth, is in my judgment an act of self-sufficiency incompatible with a due subjection to the Holy Ghost, and tends to produce and encourage a similar spirit in the reader. The prophetic, like the doctrinal, and other parts of the word of God, are not to be mastered as books of science and general knowledge. The latter require intellectual ability only, and make no demand upon the moral aptitudes of the student. Not so the former. They were given by the Holy Ghost, and for reasons far other than even a carnally minded Christian would think of. They appeal to the renewed mind, and imperatively call for a true soul in fellowship with the purposes of God. For lack of this we find that the very saints of God do not seem able to judge between things that differ widely. Take for example the views of many Christians as to the walk of the Church. Having little fellowship with the thoughts of God respecting the body He is now fowling by the Spirit for the Lord Jesus Christ, they do not see the inconsistency of believers standing in what contravenes some, at least, of the primary principles of the Church. So with their views of what is delivered by the Spirit concerning things to come. The author says he assumes the subject-matter of the Apocalypse to be the continuous fortunes of the Church, and the world (i.e., of the Christian Church and the Roman world). What right has the author so to assume? Is not the legitimate sphere of hypothesis that in which no primary evidence is found? Further assumptions should always be closely tested by the subject-matter to which they belong. Even when this has been done with a certain measure of satisfactory result, they may often all be wrong. So that a scheme which rests only on assumptions, however probable, is but a probability after all. Now to rest the interpretation of the Apocalypse—a portion vitally connected with the preceding prophetic utterances of the Holy Ghost, not only in details but essentially; belonging to the same great structure of prophetic truth which the Spirit began to rear by the Old Testament prophets—to rest this, I say, upon mere assumptions is not less unwise than unwarrantable. If it is not necessary for Old Testament prophecy, why for the Apocalypse? Are we prepared to say that the older prophecies present no evidence of their meaning sufficient to give an insight through the Spirit, as definite as is needful? And if this is so with the Old Testament, is it otherwise with the Apocalypse, organically connected as it is with what went before? Is there not adequate instructions in the scriptures of truth to teach the humble and dependent soul, and thus to render needless, if not dangerous, all assumptions as to the scope and subject-matter of prophecy? That Mr. E. resorts to such an expedient is a plain proof that he feels that he has no other ground to stand upon. The sphere, subject-matter, and the essential character of the Spirit's testimonies in the Apocalypse, are taken for granted. Is this necessary? Suffer me to bring one of his assumptions to the test. First, he says, “the subject- matter of the Apocalyptic seals is the temporary glory of Pagan Rome, and its ravages and destruction by the Goths, Saracens, and Turks, after it had become Christianized, and that the decline and fall of Pagan Rome was owing to the advancing power of Christianity.” If this were so, what are we called upon to believe? That all the seals are past! and that the first six trumpets have received their accomplishment already! Accordingly the events under the seals have relation to the transient splendor, the wane and the extinction of the Pagan Roman world before the power of Christianity. Mark the words, before the power of Christianity. I am told that the day of the Lamb's wrath had arrived, when the forces under Licinius were defeated by Constantine—that then and before some noted personages who had persecuted the Christians, and Licinius who had opposed Constantine—whom the author seems to think divinely commissioned by the Lord to assume the emblem of His passion as the badge of his commission, to go forth, in the name of the Prince of Peace, and scatter war and destruction among men—had remorse on their death-bed because of their conduct, and that the object that inspired their dread was the wrath of the Lamb! Supposing that individuals may have died in remorse of conscience, and under a vague apprehension of judgment after death, what was there in such things at all on a moral level with the language of the sixth vial? A few great men are made to mean the kings of the earth, the great men and the chief captains, and the mighty men Licinius and his defeated soldiers represent all these, and every bondman and every freeman besides! What parallel between the death-bed [Rev. 6; 16:17, does not disclose the actual presence of that day, but a fearful convulsion which produced this apprehension in men's minds. They said “the great day of His wrath is come.” The Spirit did not say this. Mr. E. is right thus far in my opinion. It is the expression of human terror, not God's utterance, save as predicting, men's hearts failing them for fear.—ED.] terrors of a few Roman Emperors or the consternation of the forces under Licinius at their defeat by Constantine, and the great day of the Lamb's wrath, which is to be visible to all and to inspire universal terror through all the earth, for who shall be able to stand? Again, the fifth seal reveals martyr's blood shed like water upon the earth; and yet, according to the “Horaz,” this was included among the events which marked the progress of triumphing Christianity, before which the Paganism of the “world's mistress” became changed into the Christianity of the Church of God.

Now I ask myself what is there in any of the Apocalyptic seals that has the characteristics of truth's progress on the earth? Is the mighty conqueror under the first seal; is universal murder under the second seal? is black famine under the third; is the march of death over the fourth part of the earth, with hell his follower slaying with the sword, with hunger, with pestilence, and with wild beasts (θηρίων), under the fourth; is the cry of the martyrs' souls beneath the altar for vengeance under the fifth, and the persecution and slaughter of many more upon the earth after a little season; or the great earthquake leading men to anticipate the wrath of the Lamb under the sixth seal: are these things marked by any real resemblance to the progress of God's truth, or the victories of the gospel? The heart that can say “yes” can have little spiritual power to hold the balances of the sanctuary. A greater perversion of this part of the Spirit's revelations is scarcely possible. It indicates, to my mind at least, how little there is of that priestly discrimination to put a difference between holy and unholy things, which the functions of the sanctuary of God imperatively demand.

The Lord Jesus said, “he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.” That a Christian can take the words of the Holy Ghost, “the temple and holy city” to be expressive of Pagan or even of Christianized Rome, marks an obliquity of judgment that renders him, in my opinion, an unsafe expounder of the lively oracles of God. The character of his interpretation bears no affinity to the grandeur of the Spirit's utterances; while the subject-matter of the two is marked by just the difference between the holy and profane. Could Christianized Rome be other than an unclean thing before God? Is not Constantine's assumption of the labarum a libel upon the heavenly source and character of Christianity You will thus perceive that my doubts whether the Protestant praeterist principle of Apocalyptic interpretation were sound have been converted into convictions of its unsoundness by the perusal of the “Hore.”

I have said so much, feeling that I ought not to commend but rather to contend against a work which, I am satisfied, is really hostile to the interests of God's truth, and to Christ's glory in the earth.

Yours in the truth, R. S.

Are There Two Half Weeks in the Apocalypse? Correction

Dear Mr. Editor

It has been long assumed that two half-weeks are spoken of in the Apocalypse. In this I have for years myself acquiesced, and I think rested on the contrast of the beast's overcoming the saints, and the witnesses destroying their enemies, as confirming this assumption. I hardly know how I was led some time back to call it in question; but I have been: and I should be glad to present the point as a question, in case you or your readers were given of God to throw any light upon it Though strongly calling in question that two halt weeks are spoken of, my mind is still quite open to conviction; and I have nothing whatever to sustain in it; and desire only to know what the Spirit of God has really meant to teach us in the word, as to it. I hardly know whether such a question enters into the object of the “Bible Treasury;” but it may elicit some light from others, as to the matter. I shall give a kind of expose of the subject from Scripture, considered from the point of view I have spoken of.

Seventy weeks are determined on Daniel's people and his holy city, to complete the blessing and close their eventful history, the display of divine government in the earth. After seven and sixty-two weeks, Messiah is cut off, and has nothing. There are seven and sixty-two till Messiah the Prince. His cutting off is indefinite; only it is after the sixty-two weeks. Then the prince that comes establishes a covenant with the many—that is, the mass of the people. Messiah's relationship, on the contrary, had been with the residue though defended to all the people. Then, in the dividing of the week, he causes the sacrifice and oblation to cease; and then, because of the protection of abominations (idols), there is a desolator. I give you Daniel as I understand it. No persecutions are here spoken of in the first half-week, nor indeed is any first half week spoken of. The prince confirms the covenant one week, and the half-weeks are marked by his change of conduct, in the middle of the week. In Dan. 7 we have, without any note of period, the general characteristics of the beast—that he wears out the heavenly saints, and, in general, makes war with the saints, till the Ancient of days comes. But the times and laws (not the saints) are delivered into his hand for half a week, (i.e., for a time, times, and half a time). In Matt. 24 there is a general testimony, such as there was in Christ's time—only it reaches the Gentiles—till the last half-week, which begins with the abomination of desolation. This exclusive allusion to the last half week in Matt. 24 had often struck me. In Rev. 13, the beast is given power to act (ποιῆσαι) forty and two months. He blasphemes God and them that dwell in heaven; and he makes war with the saints (not “those that dwell in heaven,” compare 12:12), and overcomes them. One would surely, at first sight, suppose that power to act forty-two months hardly meant that he does so eighty-four. Thus far, certainly, the last half-week seems to be noted. The second beast acts in presence of the first, who is the beast with the deadly wound healed. (Compare 17:8.) In this last chapter, no date or period is given; it is the description of the beast; but his existence is stated, and it is as descending out of the bottomless pit (he who kills the witnesses, in chap. 11) when all worship him save the elect. The Gentiles (11:2) tread the city under foot forty and two months—one would suppose therefore no longer. It is true the temple and the altar are spared; but I surely think that this applies to the destruction of true condition of worship and true worshippers, not locality, though in Jewish connection. But if this be true of verse 2, verse 3 applies to the period spoken of in verse 2. This would put the third woe ὄρανμέλλει (when he sounds as he is just about to do, I apprehend, is the sense) at the close. The casting down of Satan, the flight of the woman, and the changing of times and laws, would coincide as to epoch with the ascent of the beast out of the bottomless pit. I have thus given a kind of expose of the whole matter, sufficient to present the question, “Are there two half-weeks spoken of in the Apocalypse?” I do not reason on it, nor reply to objections which might suggest themselves. If my question draws out any remarks, that will be the time to inquire into their justice.

A collateral subject suggests itself, on which I would say a few words. There are heavenly saints spoken of in Dan. 7. Does this bring the church into the scene? It implies, I think, nothing as to the Church; rather, I think, the contrary—makes its distinctive place more clear, though the church be heavenly. We have in Daniel the saints of heavenlies, as belonging to, and connected with, these earthly questions, where there is not the smallest allusion to the Church, where all is connected with the beasts and the true kingdom over the earth. Abraham was a heavenly saint, though he saw Christ's day and was glad. He looked forward with joy to this, but was himself obliged to take it in another way. Such is the case supposed in the sermon on the mount. “The meek shall inherit the earth:” but the reward of the persecuted will be great in heaven. So in the Psalms, especially the first book, 1- 41 where even Christ is shown the path of life, (Psa. 16) so as to be in God's presence, and the saint (as Christ Himself) is satisfied, (Psa. 17) waking up after Jehovah's likeness. Yet the remnant are promised earthly blessings very plainly and clearly. See Psa. 1, 37 whence the expression in Matt. 5 is drawn; so Psa. 34 and others, as Psa. 9, 10 and indeed also Psa. 8 show.

The passages, then, in Daniel, as others, point out clearly a residue, who, connected with earthly things, and passing through them, but purified by trials out of them, and led to look upon high, have finally their portion there, where they have been taught to look. But, in general, I apprehend, their desire after heavenly things is more connected with weariness of heart in conflict, while under the law—for they are under the law—though no doubt they do in spirit thereby dwell in heaven, for the enjoyment of which the new nature renders them capable. As to the Church, remark, that in Eph. 1 it is brought out quite apart from the full blessing of individuals, developed with such inexpressible beauty, first in their calling, then in the knowledge given them of the purpose of God to gather together all in one, in Christ, and in the inheritance obtained in Him. After that the apostle prays that they may understand these two points of God's calling, and inheritance in the saints. But then he adds another demand, brought in addition, that they might know the exceeding greatness of His power, which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead; and then first brings in the Church as His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all; thus giving the Church, which He had not before spoken of, a peculiar place in union with Christ, as raised from the dead, (compare Col. 1:18,) and sitting at the right hand of God. God gave Him, the raised Jesus, to be head—over all things—to the Church, which is His-body, the fullness of Him who filleth all in all. It has no existence but united to Him, and has its existence consequent on His exaltation. Hence it is said we are “one body in Christ” (Rom. 12:5), and still stronger, “so also is Christ” (1 Cor. 12:12). And here note that in Eph. 1, Christ is considered as the exalted man. The chapter speaks of His (God's) mighty power which He wrought in Christ. Christ is looked at as man, and subjected to death, and raised again by another, even God; that is, it is a Christ really living in time. When the forming of the body on earth, by the Holy Ghost, is spoken of, the word leads us to the same truth: “By one Spirit we have been all baptized into one body” (1 Cor. 12:13). There is (Eph. 4) “one body and one Spirit,.... one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” I go on to “one baptism,” because it shows that the apostle is speaking of those who are brought in by the known death and resurrection of Christ. The testimony of 1 Corinthians is beyond controversy; and while the Ephesians shows individual privilege in the highest way, as relationship, position, and character, making the individual the proper object of every ministration of the Church, the more the scriptures are searched into, the more the Church—the assembly—will be seen to have a distinct and peculiar position, and to be a special and distinctive body. Heb. 12 shows it very clearly. Thus in the midst of the general assembly of heaven, “to an innumerable company of angels, the general assembly, and to the church of the firstborn whose names are written in heaven.” It is really forgotten that, unless the question of authorship be raised on the last mentioned passage, in the apostolic writings none ever speaks of “the Church” but Paul.

I resume the points as to the half-weeks. Christ's connection with the first half-week is left entirely vague. Seventy weeks are determined on the city and the sanctuary to bring in blessing. Then there are seven and sixty-two weeks till Messiah the Prince. A week thus remains. But after the sixty-two weeks, Messiah is cut off, and has nothing—after their fulfillment, but His time passes for nothing; it drops through, as He is rejected. We can say that in His death He laid the foundation of the new covenant, and that, in some sort during His life, He may be said to have been dealing with the remnant in establishing a covenant, associating them on certain principles with Himself. I apprehend what is called “confirming a [not the] covenant” means forming it as on established principles of association. This the prince does with the mass or the many. This prince (not the Messiah) is alone said to do it, and in the dividing of the week, which is referred to in connection with him only, he subverts the whole order of Jewish worship, breaks their apparent link with God, making sacrifice and offering cease. In Dan. 9 we have only the earthly historical view of the matter. But, at this epoch, Satan is cast down from heaven, the blasphemous beast comes up out of the bottomless pit—he whose deadly wound was healed. Thus, incontrovertibly, the last half-week is the great subject of testimony; it alone is referred to by the Lord; nor indeed is the first referred to as a half-week when its existence is proved (Dan. 9:27). Of course, as the prince changes his conduct in the dividing of the week, there must have been a half-week before; but the “confirming” is referred to the week in general. Satan's (to him, probably, unlooked-for) rejection from heaven changes the whole scene. He, as to the mass, sets aside the public outward testimony to God. This would account for the witnesses being raised up, as witnesses before the God of the earth; because, Satan being become the Satan of the earth then, God's witness must be there where Satan's power is and refer to it, just as the church's ought to the heavenly now. The particular protection of the witnesses accounts for their subsisting in spite of it. They were as Moses and Elias in reference to the power of evil.

The Bible and the Conscience

That every man has a conscience is a truth of the last importance. God has taken care that man, falling into sin, should, in and with the sin, acquire the knowledge of good and evil—a profound and admirable ordering of divine wisdom, as it was impossible he could have that knowledge before. The knowledge of good and evil, in One necessarily above all evil in nature, is the sphere of, and inseparable from, holiness. In man this is impossible. He is in innocence, or with a conscience in sin. But then, if conscience come with sin, while in itself it is the knowledge of good and evil, (i.e. of the difference of right and wrong), it may be deadened, perverted; it gives no motives more than approval and disapproval, no power, no living object, save as fear of judgment may come in.

To man in this state, a revelation of God is made from the beginning, a promise of deliverance in another than himself; the all-important principle we have seen of the mind being taken out of self—affection, thankfulness, adoration of heart introduced in contrast with judgment, while the truth of judgment is owned, law confirmed, but deliverance given from it. But God gives a full revelation as to the whole of His relationships with man, in responsibility, and in grace. That is, He either puts Himself in relationship, or shows a relationship which exists, with the being who has the conscience. We must consider it in both these lights. The latter is law, the former grace. Both were already seen in Paradise. In and out of Christianity, men have sought to reconcile them: out of Christ they never can. But there they were, responsibility and life—a command (not knowledge of right and wrong), but a command, and free communication of life; responsibility, and giving of life. Man took of the first tree, and never ate of the second. He goes out a sinner, with death on him, and judgment before him—the promise of a Deliverer, but in another; no promise to him, (for he was in sin) but for him; the seed of the woman—which Adam specifically was not. The first creature, man, flesh was no longer in communion, or heir—he was lost. Then came God's witness to men, and temporal judgment of the world on that footing, i.e. the flood; then promise unconditional, again confirmed to the seed, to that one only, as Paul says, and as is strictly and profoundly true. (Gen. 22) No question of responsibility is raised; God would bless all nations in the promised Seed. But could the question of righteousness be left as indifferent? Impossible. It is raised by law—obedience and blessing, disobedience and the curse. This is broken, before it is formally given, in its first and chiefest link—that which bound man immediately to God. They made other gods—turned their glory into the similitude of a calf eating hay. Then, after various dealings in mercy, the work of God comes, not dealings with the responsibility of men, but recognizing it, (grace, which brings salvation, sealing the truth of all the previous responsibility, for otherwise salvation were not needed, but going on another ground and meeting the case). Christ takes the effect of the broken responsibility on Himself, dies for sin, and is the source of life, and that according to righteousness. The whole question of the two trees of Paradise, life-giving and good and evil, and man's ruin in this, is settled for those who receive Christ forever, with the largest, yea, a perfect revelation of God as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in all His riches and ways. Two points come before us here: how are we to view the Bible, even the doctrinal parts of it? and is conscience to be between us and the Bible as supreme interpreter?

The whole question is, Is there a revelation? Is anything heavenly to come within the scope of man's thoughts? Has God to be known; or merely right and wrong discerned! And if He has to be known, must He not reveal Himself? Now I say, if we are to be blessed, God must be known. If I am away from God in sin, and so the Scripture treats man, and conscience cannot deny it, doing right and wrong cannot be settled but by returning to God. If a child has wickedly abandoned his father's house, he may leave off particular faults, but he can never be right till he returns and submits to his father. But the true knowledge of God is lost, and the more man reasons in sin, the more it is lost. God must be good: I can say that when once He has been revealed, for heathens did not know this as truth, though instinct looked for it—wants looked for it. They did not in their notion of God rise above the passions of men. When they did rise above them, they held that God could not have anything to say to men. But now God has been revealed; and even the poorest man knows God must be good. But if I begin to reason, what do I see? An innocent child perishing in agony, the mass of the world degraded to the lowest degree by heathenism—how is He then good? An infinitesimal part of the race, for centuries, alone knowing the unity of the Godhead, and they almost worse than their neighbors; sin having power over myself, brutality in families, wars, tumults, and miseries—how is He good? If I say, Ah! but that is fallen man, departed from God. Then I ask, how then can he be received back again? I cannot with any sense deny that he is a sinner, and if God did not make him bad, he is fallen. The cravings of nature prove he is. How can he be back with God, whom I must then think to be holy and pure A revelation from God, and of God, is the first necessity of my nature as a moral being. I get both in Christ. “He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God.” I set to my seal, on believing Him, that God is true; but then it is not only the word received from above (that a prophet—that John had, and spoke of earthly things, moved in the sphere in which God dealt with man as a creature on earth responsible to God); but He came Himself from above. God spoke in the Son; His words were in a personal and complete way, though a man, the words of God. They were spoken by the Lord. Now, he that receives his testimony sets to his seal that God is true. And note how this is stated. No one is ascended into heaven, but He who is come down from heaven, even the Son of man who is in heaven, and what He hath seen and heard, that He testifieth. Oh what a blessing is here, which none else can give, for none else has gone up to heaven to tell us what is there! In this poor distracted sin-beset world, I have the sweet and holy ways and divine objects of heaven brought down to my heart, by One who is the center of its glory and delights, and come to bring them to me in love, yet without leaving it.

If it be said that there is a conscience which must and does judge what is before it (e. g. a God not good and not holy), I answer how long has this been the case with man? Did ever conscience make a difficulty, when a revelation had not been given? Was there ever such a thing as a holy God thought of, or the need of holiness in God dreamed of, in any religion but a revealed one? We may find partial traces of goodness as to human need and deliverance from tyranny in India, in the avatars of Vishnoo, in that otherwise monstrous idolatry. But all idolatry everywhere proves that the notion that goodness and holiness were required in a divine being by the conscience of man is utterly false. The gods were the reproduction of men's passions with a superior degree of power. When revelation was given, and redemption was made known by God, then holiness and goodness were made known and estimated, but nowhere else. That is, instead of the conscience being between us and the Bible or a positive revelation, there must be a revelation between God and us and our conscience, or if you please, between God and us, in order that the conscience may feel that God must be good and holy to be God at all. When the revelation has been given, the conscience recognizes it, but never before.

Now this is essential and conclusive on the question before us, and shows us that conscience within is wholly incapable of judging. But there is a conscience, and when a divine revelation or light comes to it from God, it is susceptible of impressions from it, so as to have a right judgment, but never without, as to what is divine. Modern infidels are reasoning from the effect of divine light, to deny its necessity. As when light comes in, the eye can see; with none it cannot, and would never know it could. Scripture is true—when men had the knowledge of God, they did not discern to retain God in their knowledge.

Men have not weighed these facts, or rather, have not thought of them; but they are true, and they certainly put the pretensions of infidelity and of man's mind in a very peculiar light. They are really vaunting themselves as competent to judge Christianity; whereas the only light they have to judge it by, they have got from it, or from Judaism. Without it man's mind sunk into the grossest idolatry and moral degradation. A revelation alone enabled them, by revealing what God really is, and so forming their understandings to judge of what He ought to be. There is another point strikes me in our conversation. How little their themes bear the test of history and facts. They make boast of philosophy, but it is well known that up to Socrates, it was little but Cosmogony, and Plato's morality was communism, and his theology demonism, perhaps metempsychosis. This argument from conscience is what they are least able to meet, for one was conscious that an unholy God, or one that was not good, could not have been borne for a moment.

And it is less possible, because men have a revelation. It is their great theme abroad. But it is always useful to meet infidels on their own ground—I mean on its untenableness, as has been already referred to. If God is simply good, and the fall and redemption are not God's truth, explain to me the state of this world, three-quarters heathen, and of the other, a great part Mussulman or Papist, and every kind of misery and degradation dominant, and selfishness the dominant spring of all its activities, where lusts and passions are not so. If man be not fallen, where is God's goodness? And if God be not good, what is? Christianity tells me man is fallen, and reveals to me God in goodness in the midst of the misery, and redemption has an issue out of it: and the history of man, not succeeding generations sacrificed to rationalists' theories of progress of the fifty-ninth century; but revelations of this goodness and deliverance for faith to lay hold of from the day of man's fall, though the time was not come to accomplish the thing promised. And allow me to ask you, if man be so competent, how comes it there is so much difficulty, and conflict, and uncertainty? Why is there so much difficulty in finding out God? Why any question of discovering Him, if men have not lost Him? Why did men believe in Jupiter, or Siva, &c., or Odin King of men, or Ormuzd and Ahriman, or Khem, or a host of others, which it is useless for me to follow?

Why have they such difficulty, when it is owned God must be good and holy, in coming to Him and walking with Him? No; it is evident man has got away from God, many horridly, degradingly; and the fairest of Eve's daughters caring more for a pretty ribbon, and of her sons for gold or a title, than all which God presents to them, to win their hearts in the Son of God's sufferings, and offering up Himself in grace for them. No; man is fallen, has lost the sense of what God is, and of His love—has not his heart's delight in that which God is, or what is supremely good. Nothing proves it more than his not finding it out. God has given a conscience; but it does not judge the word: the word of God judges it. In one sense, every man must judge; but his judgment reveals him in presence of the word. A man's judgment of other things always reveals his own state. He is certainly lost, condemned, if he does not receive the word. God speaks, and gives adequate witness of who He is. “He that believeth not is condemned already.” Light is come into the world. If men prefer darkness, it is not their conscience. There will must be at work.

I ask, is man bound to receive the love of God or not? There He is to test every man's soul by His reception, or the contrary. It does not test the soul. He has a right to judge, you tell me. If he does not receive Him, he proves himself bad, bad in will. He has to judge; but if he rejects what is perfect in goodness, his own state is shown. He is judged by his approval or disapproval of what is there, because perfection, because God manifest in the flesh, is there—because God is speaking woe to him who dues not hearken. Yes, he has to judge. It is not his right: he is a lost creature; but he is tested by it—it is his responsibility. How he can meet it, I do not inquire here. I believe the grace of God is needed; but there is God speaking—speaking in grace. Is He received or not? The two things John speaks of here are the words of God, and One come from above who is above all. Am I not bound to listen? am I not bound to receive? You tell me, must I not judge whether they are His words, and whether He came from above? I answer, yes; but you are judged by the result you come to, because God knows He has given a perfectly-adapted and gracious witness; yea, that He is it. If you have rejected this, you have rejected Him, and remain in your sins and under wrath.

The Calling of the Disciples

There is no discrepancy between what John relates, chapter 1:33-42, respecting Andrew and Simon following Jesus at Jordan, and the account given by the other evangelists of their being called at the sea of Galilee. John describes the first interview which those two disciples had with Jesus, but says nothing regarding their subsequent call at the sea of Galilee. That Andrew and Simon, after this interview with Jesus, returned to their occupation as fishermen, is very evident from Luke's narrative, chapter 5:1-11

The Canon of Scripture and the Various Divisions of the Books

It is very remarkable in how many different senses the word Canon is used, though all these senses are traceable to one idea attached to it. Originally it is a Greek word signifying Reed, whence our own word Cane is derived; then by an easy transition, it is supplied to anything in shape resembling a Reed or Cane, especially a Ruler for drawing straight lines. There is no doubt that the word Cannon, for great guns, comes from the same source, notwithstanding our spelling it with two n's. Then it is taken to signify a Rule for directing the conduct. Thus a clergyman connected with a cathedral is called a Canon; because he is supposed to live according to a certain Rule. And we speak of the Canon of Scripture, meaning thereby those books which are to be taken as the Rule of faith.

Hence by canonical Scripture is to be understood those writings which are stamped with Divine and infallible authority, and are distinguished from all others which are submitted to our judgment, and upon which we are free to pronounce an opinion. A canonical book is given to us, as containing the word of God, i.e., the message or command which God sends to us; and is therefore entirely beyond our doubts or our opinions.

From this it follows that every canonical book must be recommended by some one, who carried the Divine authority along with him—some one to whom Jehovah had actually appeared, and given the commission to execute his office. It is not, of course, needed that the writer should himself have received his mission from Jehovah; but some such an one must have seen and sanctioned the work. The books of the prophets in the Old Testament are all published, as containing the words which Jehovah spoke to the Prophets. And the other books received the sanction of such prophets, before they were accepted as containing the rule of faith, or as being canonical.

In the case of the books of the Old Testament our inquiry is really enclosed within narrower Hunts than might at first sight appear: for the very greatest authority we could possibly have is that of our Lord Jesus Christ, who was indeed Jehovah incarnate. He frequently refers to the Old Scriptures, as containing the word of life, and as being a certain collection of books, then accounted sacred by the Jews. If we can ascertain what the recognized Canon of Scripture among the Jews was in his time, we know at once what we are to receive as canonical. Now there is no doubt whatever upon this point. We, and all reformed churches, are quite in agreement with the Jews here. It is a matter undisputed by any one, that those books of the Old Testament which we venerate as canonical were the only Scriptures known to the Jews, when our Savior preached in Judea.

The Roman Catholic Church receives as canonical certain books which are rejected by the Reformers, and called by them The Apocrypha. This word signifies what is concealed, and seems originally to have been applied to those books which were not published and universally known as canonical Scriptures, but were confined to some few heretical congregations, known only to them, and concealed except from the initiated. And then it came to mean, as with us, specially those books sometimes classed as belonging to the Old Testament, but never received by the Jews as such. These books were appended to the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint, and thence transferred to the Vulgate or Latin translation made from the Septuagint. Some of these books, as Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, are in every way to be recommended, as containing wise and pious precepts, though not directly sanctioned by Divine authority. Some of the books of Maccabees are good and reliable history, while others are mere extravagant romances, of no value whatever.

Let it be observed that the Roman Church does not deny the fact upon which the Reformers proceeded—viz., that these Apocryphal books were never received as canonical by the Jews. It will be seen, on reference to the preface of the Douay Bible—i.e.; the English version of the Bible sanctioned by the Roman Church—that the canonicity of the Apocrypha is made to rest solely on the dogmatic authority of the Church.

In the case of the New Testament the whole of Christendom is agreed. All the books making up its canon were composed within the compass of a single generation; and therefore easily capable of being marked off from all other writings. Every single book of the New Testament was written either by an apostle, or in the case of two of the gospels, by immediate companions of apostles. And, as though to make assurance doubly sure, the life of John was extended over a long period, in order that no book might go out to the world, as canonical and inspired, but what he had sanctioned as such; and in this matter he exercised his Master's authority.

There were indeed some congregations at an early time, which had not known some of the books—such as the Epistle to the Hebrews, the 2nd Epistle of Peter, the two shorter Epistles of John, and. the Apocalypse: but, upon investigation, it is clearly seen that they never rejected these writings, but only that the writings had not at that moment reached them.

And never at any time were inferior or spurious writings allowed to usurp the place of Scripture. There are several ancient books in existence, certainly written very soon after, and some even before, the Canon of the New Testament was settled: such as the epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, an Epistle ascribed to Barnabas, and certainly of very ancient date: some Epistles of Ignatius and Polycarp, who were St. John's disciples, and a curious allegory, called the Shepherd of Hernias. These books are genuine and perhaps more or less valuable; but no one ever mistook them for Scripture. There are also extant, but very little known, certain manifest forgeries—such as a pretended Epistle of Christ to King Abgarus, several pretended gospels, and some spurious Epistles. We call these forgeries manifest, for they abound in the most palpable anachronisms and mistakes, and never seem to have deceived any one. Some of the stories about the early life of Jesus are in marked contrast with the simplicity and truthfulness of the real Gospels, and are filled with the wildest accounts of his miracles.

Next, we may say a few words as to the various divisions and sub-divisions we find in our Bibles. The distinction into the Old and New Testaments is obvious enough; and signifies the separation between what preceded and what followed the coming of Christ in the flesh.

From an early period the Jews made a threefold division of their Scriptures: into the law, the prophets, and the sacred writings, to which allusion is made by our Lord himself. A great deal has been said as to the origin of this division: and the following may be taken as the most probable. The law of Moses stood, of course, by itself, as it contained their national covenant, which subsequent scripture writers explained and illustrated, but did not add to it. This law was read through in the synagogues once in the course of the year: a certain portion being read every sabbath morning, and constituting what we should call a first lesson. And each of these divisions was subdivided into seven portions, one of which was allotted to each of the seven readers who read the lesson.

There arose also the custom of reading, as a second lesson, some portion of the rest of the Scriptures, which might illustrate the first lesson out of the law. The books, therefore, out of which these selections were taken constitute a class apart, under the general name of the Prophets; although the greater part of the historical books were included among them. And the remaining books constituted the third class under the name of the Sacred Writings.

The sequence of the books in the Hebrew Bibles is clearly that due to synagogue requirements; whereas that observed in our English and in all modern Bibles is the more natural arrangement, and is derived from the Latin Vulgate, which again received it from the Septuagint or early Greek version of the Old Testament.

Our division is—lst, the law; 2nd, the historical books in their chronological order; 3rd, the devotional books in. their presumed order; and 4th, the prophetical in order, partly of time and partly of importance.

In the New Testament, till comparatively a recent epoch, the books had no settled divisions; only running titles at the top or in the margin of the MSS. to denote what the text was treating of. The arrangement of the books has always been as we now have them.

Our present division into chapters and verses is really very modern. In the middle of the thirteenth century, i. e., during the reign of our Henry HI., about the time when our first parliament sat, a certain Dominican, Cardinal Hugo De Sancto Caro, while preparing a concordance for the Vulgate (the first of that nature extant) divided the entire Bible into chapters, which were copied from him into all the subsequent editions and translations, and have remained unchanged to the present day. He did not subdivide into verses; but placed down the margin at equal distances the letters A. B. C. D. for convenience of reference.

The introduction of verses is still more modern, being unknown for 200 years after the division into chapters; and our own earlier English Bibles, such as Wycliffe's at the end of the fourteenth century, and Tynedale's and Coverdale's in the first half of the sixteenth century, have the chapters, but not the verses.

The history of the verses is this. About the year 1450, near the time of the introduction of printing, when the Hebrew Bibles began to be much sought after, a certain Rabbi Mordecai Nathan, a learned Jew of Vience, published a concordance of the Hebrew Bible, and adopted Cardinal Hugo's chapters, which were found convenient. And he added the subdivision into verses, which as far as the Old Testament is concerned, remained as at present. But for a century afterward, that is till about 1551, this division into verses seems to have been unknown in the Christian Bibles. It is said to have been introduced by the celebrated French printer, Robert Stephens, who, adopting the Jewish verses for the old Testament, added the verses now in use for the New. And this arrangement was speedily transferred to all Bibles and Testaments. The first English Bible in which verses appear is that published by Archbishop Parker in 1568, commonly called the Bishop's Bible, and which immediately preceded our present, or King James' Bible.

There are many inconveniences attending our chapters and verses, as they appear to have been made quite arbitrarily, and often interrupt the sense. It should never be forgotten that they were originally intended solely for concordances, and for facility of reference. And every Bible student should accustom himself to get rid of the notion that they have any other use.

It may be mentioned, in conclusion, that the word Bible is really a plural noun, meaning the Books merely, i. e., of course the sacred books. And this plural character should never be lost sight of; for we may fall into serious mistakes if we forget the different times, and in part the different objects, of the several books making up the Bible.

It so happens that the same word in Greek expresses Covenant and Testament. The Old Scriptures are called by Paul, 2 Cor. 3:14, the Old Testament, because they contain the old covenant made with Israel. And, this name becoming fixed to the first volume, it soon became customary to call, by way of contrast, the second volume, the New Testament.

W. H. J.

Change No Cure

Man changes his way but does not cure himself.

The calf of the wilderness was followed by the Captain; but both were evil.

Idols in the land lead to Babylon; but return from Babylon leads to infidel pride, as in Malachi.

The Lord tells us of change without cure in the swept house. Matt. 12; Luke 11

The Apostle tells us of “latter times” and of “last days,” but both evil though different. 1 Tim. 4; 2 Tim. 3

The Apocalypse tells us of Babylon and the Beast; and of the nations giving up the one for the other; but both are evil. Rev. 17

Thus change there is but no cure. Judgment therefore closes the scene and makes way for a new thing-not a mended thing. Glory succeeds judgment.

Christ Dwelling in Our Hearts by Faith

As knowing Jesus to be precious to our souls, our eyes and hearts, being occupied with Him, will be effectually kept from being taken up with the vanity and sin around. And this, too, will be our strength against the sin and corruption within. Whatever I see in myself that is not in Him is sin. But then it is not thinking upon my own sins, and being occupied with my own vileness, that will humble me, but thinking of the Lord Jesus and dwelling upon the excellencies in Him. It is well to be done with ourselves and to be taken up with Jesus. We are entitled to forget ourselves—we are entitled to forget our sins—we are entitled to forget all but Jesus. It is by looking unto Jesus that we can give up anything, and can walk as obedient children. His love constrains us. Were it simply a command, we should have no power to obey.

Christian Love and Union

There are still Christians who believe that God in supreme love became a man, and so died for them in love—that the first of duties, the truest affection, without which all others are vile, is to appreciate Him who did it as we ought—that the first of all obligations is to the Savior; and that to slight that, and to attempt to sustain love in despite of that, is the chiefest wickedness and the worst of all dispositions. We owe something to Christ; and if He be dishonored and slighted, 1 may seek to win, but I cannot be the loving companion of one who has denied my Lord deliberately. “To me to live is Christ.” To own Him and dishonor Him is worse than heathenism: it is to own and acquiesce in His dishonor when I know better. The man who believes Christ to be God, and is the professed Christian companion of him who denies it, is worse than the latter. We may all alas! err; but he who knows the truth, and accepts what he knows degrades Christ, is deliberately preferring ease and companionship to Him though he may dignify it with the name of love. Every effort to recover is right; but a step in acquiescence is a step in disloyalty to One whom no one would have dared to dishonor if He had not come down in love.

Christ, not opinion, is the center of union; but I never meant, nor do I mean, that a true Christ and a false one were equally good as a center, provided people are amiable one with another; for that means that union is man's amiability and the denial of Christ. What do I want of union if it be not union in Christ, according to the power of life, through the Holy Ghost'?

The business of those united is Christ's glory. If Christians ever unite on a condition of that not being essential, their union is not Christian union at all. I have no reason for union but Christ, the living Savior. I do not want any union but that which makes Him the center and the all and the hope of it. “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren;” but to make that a plea for indifference to Christ's personal glory, in order to be one with him who calling himself a brother denies and undermines it, is, in my mind, wickedness.

What Is the Church? Do the Old Testament Saints Form Part of It? Part 1

Few questions can compare in importance with those which relate to the nature, calling, privileges, responsibilities, and destiny of “the Church of God.” There are indeed questions of foundation-truth, as to God Himself, as to the person and sacrifice of His beloved Son, and as to the application of His saving benefits by the Spirit through faith, which take precedence of all others. But where these, through the mercy of God, are settled questions, and the soul by faith knows God in Christ, through the quickening operation of the Holy Ghost, it finds itself associated with many others in the blessedness to which it is thus introduced; and there can scarcely then be a more important inquiry than this, What has God revealed touching the corporate standing of those who are thus linked together by their enjoyment of the common salvation? In what relation do they stand to God? to Christ? to the Holy Spirit? to one another? and to the world '? If these mutual and corporate relations do form a subject of inspired instruction, how much must depend on our reception of it, as to intelligent communion, enlightened obedience, faithful testimony, and fruitfulness in every way to the glory of God.

We hesitate not to avow our conviction, that God has fully revealed His mind on these subjects; and we believe spiritual acquaintance therewith, to be one of the most pressing wants of Christians generally in the present day. With this conviction, we hail the appearance of the papers before us. Hostile as they are, to what we deem the scripture doctrine of “the Church,” their publication indicates the hold which that doctrine has gained on many minds; and it tends, at the same time, to promote still further inquiry. Total silence as to this doctrine has, for years, been observed by some, who have viewed its propagation with no friendly eye; and that now they should deem it needful openly to resist it, only shows the extent to which, through the mercy of God, it has forced itself on the attention of His people. Nor do we intend anything unkind to the writer (or writers) of these articles, when we add, that the character of their opposition in no degree abates our confidence in the doctrine they assail. For what mode of discussion have they chosen to adopt? Do they meet the whole question fairly in the face, and examine, and test by scripture, the definition of “the Church,” given by those whose views they controvert? Do they consider in detail the array of New Testament evidence, by which that definition is sustained? Do they demolish thus the position they assail, and afterward proceed to give their own definition of the principal term in question, demonstrating, by scripture quotations, that such is its universal or even its ordinary signification and use, in God's holy word? To have discussed the question thus, would have brought it fairly to the test of scripture, and would evidently, on the whole, have best promoted the interests of truth. But we see no want of charity in supposing, that this (or some similar mode of discussion) would have been the course adopted, had it afforded any prospect of success. So far from this, is the line actually pursued in these articles, that, evading the primary question as to what “the Church” is, and silently passing over what has been advanced on this subject, they rest their whole case on objections, having reference to the Old Testament saints, and their place in the scene of future glory. This is little more than a collateral, and certainly a very subordinate question. It derives its importance from the bearing it is represented as having on the general subject. Had more direct and weighty arguments been at command, we may be sure, from the animus of these papers, especially the last, that they would have been employed. But as the inferential reasoning on subordinate points which is used, might lead some to prejudge the whole question, and settle down in conclusions unwarranted by scripture, contrary to its scope, and subversive of some of its plainest teachings on the primary and specific subject of what “the Church” really is, we are ready to examine all that these papers contain. But as truth and edification, not controversy and triumph, are the objects we desire to keep in view, the editor of the Quarterly Journal and his contributor (or contributors) must excuse us, if we seek to keep in relief what they have sought to put in the shade, the doctrine of the New Testament as to what constitutes “the Church of God.”

1. We believe that what scripture terms “the Church,” did not exist in Old Testament times. If it did, where are the passages which prove it? Where in the Old Testament does the phrase occur? Or where is the subject treated of under any other terms? If there be passages in the ancient scriptures which recognize “the Church” as then existing, what could be easier than to produce them? or what so decisive of the question which these articles discuss? But no such passages are produced; and for the best of reasons, that none such can be found. Indeed these articles themselves do not contend that “the Church” existed on earth in Old Testament times. One of them, the second, admits that “Abraham and the Old Testament saints had not the same fullness of light, nor the same dispensational privileges, as were possessed by Peter, and Paul, and John. Neither the Old Testament saints, nor even John the Baptist, who came between the Old Testament and the New, were dispensationally in the kingdom of heaven as an economy on the earth.” (pp. 9S, 99.) Now we are far from accepting the quiet assumption of the writer, that “the Church” and “the kingdom of heaven” are equivalent terms; but this affects not his admission, that there are dispensational differences between Old Testament saints and such as are under the “economy” at present existing on “earth.” His estimate of these differences may be, that they are of little importance; and he may contend that “heaven is not made a transcript of the dispensational differences of earth;” but the question is, In what light does scripture present these differences? They would certainly not seem unimportant, from such words as the following; words, be it remembered, not addressed to “the Church,” but to the disciples during the life-time of our Lord on earth. Even at that time we are told, “he turned him unto his disciples, and said privately, Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see: for I tell you, that many prophets and kings have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which you hear, and have not heard them.” (Luke 10:23, 24.) And the disciples were far from having at that time heard or seen the whole of what was intended for them. It was long after this, and just on the eve of their Lord's departure, that He said, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth.” (John 16; 12:13) Surely, if what they saw and heard, in the earlier stage of their tuition by our Lord Himself, had been the object of longing, but unsatisfied, desire to the saints of former ages, there must be a still greater chasm between all that those Old Testament saints enjoyed, and the blessedness of the disciples, when the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, had come. Dispensational differences there were, as the articles under review admit: but they were of a character such as these articles would never suggest. This will become more apparent as we proceed. Meanwhile, it is well to remember, that it is not even contended in these articles, that “the Church” existed on earth in Old Testament times.

2. There did exist in those ancient days, and that as recognized of God, a state of things quite incompatible with the scriptural conditions of the existence of “the Church.” In “the Church” there is neither Jew nor Gentile; while in Old Testament times these words expressed a distinction divinely instituted, and which might on no account be set aside. To neglect the appointed feasts and holy days was, in the last dispensation, a sin so grievous, that Israel's captivity and dispersion are said to be, that the land might “enjoy her sabbaths; as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies' land, even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths. As long as it lieth desolate, it shall rest because it did not rest in your sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it.” (Lev. 26:34, 35.) Now, to “observe days, and months, and times, and years,” is enough to make an apostle stand in doubt of those who do so. (Gal. 4:10.) Then, there was one place, where the Lord had chosen to place His name, and there alone might He be approached and worshipped. Now, no special sanctity attaches to one place rather than another, but “where two or three are gathered,” says our Lord, “in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” “The uncircumcised” was then an appellation resting upon all but the favored, separated race: now we read, “I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.” This may surely serve to show, that the differences we are contemplating are not mere variations of circumstance or detail, but radical, fundamental differences. Let it not be forgotten, either, that there were true saints at that time—pardoned, no doubt, and made heirs of ultimate, everlasting felicity, through the retrospective efficacy of Christ's precious blood. But the grace by which such chosen ones were saved, so far from placing them outside the frame-work of the dispensation under which they lived, inclined their hearts to observe, with a faithfulness peculiar to themselves, both the principles and institutions of that economy. With them it was obedience and faithfulness to observe, what it is faithfulness in “the Church” to disregard. How evident that “the Church” not only did not, but could not then exist.

3. It was not even by the incarnation, or the personal ministry of our Lord upon earth, that “the Church” was formed. No doubt the incarnation was an essential pre-requisite to the formation of “the Church,” just as it was to the accomplishment of redemption. But redemption was accomplished, not by incarnation, but by the cross. And while the wondrous Person, confessed by Peter as “the Christ, the Son of the living God,” was beyond all question “the Rock,” on which not “the Church” only, but all who shall be saved everlastingly are built, we have the authority of that Blessed One Himself for the assurance, that but for His death He must have continued “alone.” He was the foundation; but it was in his death on the cross that He was laid as such; and in His very reply to Peter, in which He speaks of Himself as the “Rock” on which “the Church” was to be built, He speaks of the building of it, as a then future work. He does not say “upon this rock I have built,” or “am building,” but “upon this rock I will build my church.” And, as though to intimate at once how He was to be laid as the foundation of this edifice, “from that time forth, began Jesus to show unto his disciples, how that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders, and chief priests, and scribes, and he killed, and be raised again the third day.” (Matt. 16:21.)

“The Church” is again mentioned in Matt. 18 “tell it to the Church.” But here also, our Lord evidently speaks anticipatively of His own departure, and of the time when His name should replace His bodily presence, as the center around which His disciples should be gathered. John 16:23, 24, shows, that while He continued with them, they did not ask in His name, but that they were to do so, when His bodily presence had been withdrawn. One thing is undeniable: that where Christ Himself mentions “the Church” He speaks of its formation as a then future event. The above are the only two instances in which we read of the word being used by Him; and further investigation will show, that where without the use of this term, the subject is contemplated in His discourses, He speaks of the existence of “the Church,” as well as of that by which it exists, as dependent on His own departure.

4. It was not till after His ascension, that our Lord baptized with the Holy Ghost, and it is by this baptism, that “the Church” exists. If there be one function or prerogative of Christ more insisted on in the gospels than any other, as essentially distinctive of His person and office, it is that of baptizing with the Holy Ghost. It is omitted by none of the evangelists. Their histories of our Lord's forerunner vary in length and in minuteness; but each records his testimony, that the greater, the mightier than he, should “baptize with the Holy Ghost.” Each records also, in connection therewith, the descent of the Holy Ghost upon our Lord Himself. But on this point, John the Baptist's testimony, as recorded by the beloved disciple, is of deep and special interest. “And I knew him not: but He that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.” (John 1:33.) What function could be more essentially divine than this? Who but a divine person could dispense, as of His own bounty, heaven's richest treasure? Who else could baptize with the Holy Ghost? And yet He to whom this distinctive glory belonged, was Himself a man, undistinguishable from others even by His own forerunner, till marked out to Him by His reception of that which He was afterward to bestow. How deep and real was the humiliation of the One who had thus “descended” low enough to receive, as man, that gift of the Holy Ghost, which He alone, as God, could bestow! Surely it behooves us, with unshod feet, and in the spirit of lowliest worship, to tread such holy ground, as that on which these wonders unfold themselves.

But when was this Blessed One to baptize with the Holy Ghost? Was this among the miracles of love and mercy with which His service on earth was replete? Or was it reserved as the crowning miracle, which was to signalize His ascension to heaven, when He had been rejected and crucified on earth? With any one familiar with the New Testament, to ask this question is to answer it. It was after His resurrection that our Lord, “being assembled together with” His disciples, “commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, said He, ye have heard of Me: for John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence” (Acts 1:5, 6). On this passage we would remark, 1. How the Lord refers to the baptism of John; literally quoting his words, as though to place beyond dispute, that the event of which He Himself now spake as imminent, was to be the definite accomplishment of John's well known prediction concerning Him. The prophecy, and its imminent fulfillment, are placed by our Lord in juxta-position, that their relation to each other may be perceived by all. 2. This passage demonstrates, that when these words were spoken by the risen Savior, the baptism with the Holy Ghost had not yet taken place. If the disciples had not received it, on whom could it have been conferred? 3. It is equally clear, that this baptism was none other than the descent of the Holy Ghost, ten days after these words were uttered. The disciples were not to depart from Jerusalem but wait, for they should be baptized with the Holy Ghost “not many days hence.” 4. Our Lord identifies this baptism with “the promise of the Father, which, said he, ye have heard of me.” Can there be a doubt that He here refers to His closing discourse to His disciples, in John 14 – 16? There, it is admitted by all, the promise of the Spirit is to be understood of the descent of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost. And when to all this is added the fact, that the first mention of “the Church” historically, as actually existing, is immediately after the record of this event, it may well be asked how demonstration could be more complete, than that which is thus afforded, that “the Church” began to exist on the day of Pentecost?

“And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.” This first historical mention of “the Church,” so soon after the descent of the Spirit, is no mere incidental, fortuitous connection of events. It is by the baptism of the Holy Ghost, that “the Church” exists; and there could be no mention of the effect, save anticipatively, before the cause which produces it was in operation. In the chapter in which Paul treats expressly of these subjects—in which he says, “Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular,” —in which he speaks of God having set apostles, prophets, &c., “in the church,” —in that very chapter he says, “For by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:13). Could there be a more express declaration, that it is by the baptism of the Holy Ghost, that “the Church” — “the body of Christ” —exists?

5. What is this baptism of the Holy Ghost? A most momentous question, and of the deepest importance to the correct apprehension of the subject before us. The second of the two articles under review, referring to such as hold the views we are propounding, says, “Abraham and the Old Testament saints, say they, are to be excluded, because they did not receive, whilst on earth, the Holy Spirit, in the same manner as we have received it, who have lived since Pentecost.” Let us see whether Christ and His apostles so speak of the baptism of the Holy Ghost, as to warrant observations tending, as these do (however unconsciously to the writer), to depreciate its importance. Let us see whether they treat it as a mere receiving of the Spirit in a different manner from the Old Testament saints. What is the baptism with the Holy Ghost?

First, as to the expression “received” — “because they (the Old Testament saints) did not receive, while on earth, the Holy Spirit, in the same manner as we.” The writer's view evidently is, that the Old Testament saints, and we who have lived since Pentecost, have all received the Holy Ghost, only in a different manner. Turn then, dear reader, to John 7:37, 38. “In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” What means this wondrous announcement? was it of a blessedness to be at once, during the Savior's lifetime on earth, experienced by thirsty souls who came to Him to drink, that He thus spake? was it then, at that very time, that such were not only to be themselves refreshed by the living water, but also to be channels through which rivers of it should flow to others? The largeness and graciousness of the Savior's words might seem to have left them open to this construction. But to prevent this—to prevent all misapprehension as to what those rivers of living were, or as to when they were to flow, the beloved disciple is inspired of God to add, “But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet [given]; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.” If then, our Lord's own words, authoritatively expounded by the Holy Ghost, are to decide the question, the difference between saints before, and saints after Pentecost, is not a mere difference in the manner of receiving the Spirit. What scripture calls receiving the Spirit had no existence, and could not have, till Jesus was glorified. “The Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive.” And as though to preclude the possibility of a question, we are told, “for the Holy Ghost was not yet [given],” —surely then not yet received— “because that Jesus was not yet glorified.”

Do we then deny that there were “saints” in Old Testament times? or maintain that before Pentecost, people became saints without the operation of the Spirit? Far be the thought! We have never for a moment questioned the “saintship” of Abraham, the italics are thus printed in the article itself.

Moses, and others: nor have we ever imagined that any man, in any age, could become a saint, save by the agency and work of God the Holy Ghost. But scripture distinguishes what our brethren unwittingly confound. It distinguishes “the baptism with the Holy Ghost” — “the gift of the Holy Ghost” — “the receiving of the Holy Ghost” —from those operations of the Spirit by which, equally before and after Pentecost, souls are quickened and renewed. Because the faith that saves, as well as every gracious temper, and holy act resulting therefrom, are, and always have been wrought in fallen man by the Holy Spirit, the inference is drawn, that all saints of all ages have received the Spirit, and that any change since Pentecost has only been in the manner of receiving it. But had not Peter, James, and John, been as surely regenerated by the Spirit, as Abraham, David, or Isaiah? Had not Jesus said to them, “Now ye are clean, through the word which I have spoken to you!” Had He not said of them, “I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me: and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me?” And yet, according to John 7:39, they had not “received” the Spirit; “for the Holy Ghost was not yet [given]; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.” It was after all this that their risen Lord assured them, “ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.”

What is this baptism with the Holy Ghost? May we not receive some instruction as to it from the descent of the Spirit on our Lord Himself? He is never said, indeed, to have been baptized with the Holy Ghost, but He is said to have been “anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power” (Acts 10:38). Again, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me,” &c. (Luke 4:18). So characteristic is this anointing of the place which Jesus had been ordained to fill, that this is what the very name “Christ” denotes. “The anointed,” “Messiah,” and “Christ,” are but one and the same title of this blessed One, to whom all glory belongs. Evidently it was as man that He received this anointing. But as man He was already perfect; as to His nature He was so from the first; “conceived of the Holy Ghost,” His nature, as man, was essentially holy. The meat-offering under the law—emblem of Christ in the perfectness of His life on earth—was compounded with oil, as well as anointed therewith. He did not need the anointing to make Him what He already was, pure, holy, perfect; but He received it as the broad seal, visibly set upon Him, of the ineffable satisfaction with which God His Father viewed Him in the place He had stooped to occupy. “Him hath God the Father sealed” (John 6:27) And seeing that the place to which He had thus stooped was none other than the subject, dependent, creature-place, it behooved Him that all He did, and said, and suffered, should be manifestly not by any power inherent in Him as man, perfectly holy as He was, but by the power of the Holy Ghost. “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil: for God was with him.” Accordingly, from the moment the Spirit descended like a dove lighting upon Him, we find everything attributed to the Spirit, as the power in which Christ fulfilled His mission. He was “led of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil” (Matt. 4:1). “He returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee,” (Luke 4:14). “if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God,” said He, “then the kingdom of God is come unto you” (Matt. 12:28). “Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God” (Heb. 9:14). Even after His resurrection it is said of Him, “until the day in which He was taken up, after that He through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom He had chosen” (Acts 1:2). Not only was this blessed One “God over all,” — “God manifest in the flesh;” not only was He perfect man, holy and without spot; but because He was so, He was the vessel of the full power of the Holy Ghost, with which He was anointed, and in the power of which His whole work was accomplished. But, until His ascension, He was the alone vessel in which the Spirit thus dwelt and wrought. The disciples were, no doubt, quickened by His divine power as the Son, and the subjects thus, as all saints had ever been, of the regenerating operation of the Spirit. From their Master they had received power also to heal the sick and cast out devils, just as prophets of former days had received such power from God for special ends to be answered by their ministry. For such ends there had been individuals even “filled with the Holy Ghost;” as, for instance, Elizabeth (Luke 1:41), Zacharias (verse 67), and John the Baptist (ver. 15). The two former seem to have been so filled for the particular occasion, the latter habitually. But all this is distinct from that of which Jesus was the first and the only perfect example; we mean, the being sealed or anointed with the Holy Ghost, in such sort as to become the temple of His presence, the vessel of his power, so that everything said and done was the expression of His holiness, and by the working of His power. “The Church,” by being baptized with the Holy Ghost, is brought, derivatively and subordinately, into a similarly blessed place. In Christ there was no opposing will or power; while in us alas! there is. He received the anointing, moreover, as the seal of what He was intrinsically, while it is only “in Him,” by virtue of His person and work and of our union with Him, that we are “anointed,” or “sealed.” But, giving full place to these and all other essential differences between the saints and Him who “in all things” must “have the pre-eminence,” it still remains true, that by the baptism with the Holy Ghost, saints are now so incorporated with Christ, so one with Him, as to form the vessel of the presence and power of the Holy Ghost. A passage, one verse of which has been already quoted, declares this in the most emphatic terms. Both verses are as follows: “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body being many are one body, SO ALSO IS CHRIST. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:12, 13). So absolutely one are the Head and members by the one Spirit, which has baptized all into one body, that to the whole—Head and members together—the name Christ (the anointed) is given— “SO ALSO IS CHRIST.” The whole chapter treats of the operations of the Spirit in this body, in which He dwells. All serve as “the manifestation of the Spirit,” (verse 7), to demonstrate that “it is the same God which worketh all in all” (verse 6). But whatever variety there may be of gifts, services, or operations, “all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will” (ver. 11). Did anything like this exist in Old Testament times, or at any time prior to the day of Pentecost? Is it not here directly attributed to the baptism with the Holy Ghost? and have we not seen, by the concurrent testimony of several witnesses, that never till Pentecost did this take place? Jesus Himself was anointed with the Holy Ghost on earth. But in that He was alone. To share this holy unction with His people, He had to receive it afresh on high, as the seal of His Father's infinite delight with the whole work He had perfected below. It was to be in answer, also, to His own intercession on high. “I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter” (John 14:16). Himself anointed “with the oil of gladness, above his fellows” (Heb. 1:9), it was to communicate it to them that He thus received it. “Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear” (Acts 2:23). “The Church” is the result.

(To be continued.)

What Is the Church? Do the Old Testament Saints Form Part of It? Part 2

It is true that, even after the formation of the Church, by the descent of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, divine mercy lingered over Jerusalem and her sons, unwilling to give them up, so long as any means of bringing them to repentance was left untried. The expression of this mercy in the special character of Peter's ministry to the Jews, has been already pointed out in the “Bible Treasury” (see p. 41). But connected with this peculiar ministry of the apostle of the circumcision were two remarkable facts. First, the numerous converts to Christ who were its fruit, instead of constituting the Jewish remnant, of which psalmists and prophets had so largely written, as passing through the final troubles in Judea, and emerging into the light and gladness of millennial times, were “added to the church” —to that new and unique assembly, which had begun to be formed on the day of Pentecost. Secondly, so distinct was this assembly from the Jewish nation, as such, that when Peter and John had been before the rulers, who had threatened the two apostles, and let them go, we read of these, that “being let go, they went to their own company, and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said unto them.” There now existed within the Jewish community, Gentiles not having yet been called, a perfectly distinct body or corporation to which, as to their own, company, the apostles returned, when threatened by the rulers. The rejection of the apostles' testimony—in truth the testimony of the Holy Ghost—by the heads of the nation became, at the same time, increasingly distinct, until at last it was definitively declared in the murder of Stephen. But if Jerusalem and the earth thus close their ears and hearts against the testimony of the Holy Ghost, heaven opens to the dying witness for Jesus, and he sees the glory of God, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God. Death for Christ on earth, and glory with Christ in heaven, are thus shown to be thenceforth the portion of the Church. With the exception of the twelve, the faithful are scattered from Jerusalem, and go to Samaria and beyond, preaching Christ. By special revelation, Peter is sent to the Gentiles; Saul, the persecutor, converted by sovereign grace, when in the full career of opposition to Christ, becomes the apostle of the Gentiles; Antioch, where he is first introduced by Barnabas to the work, becomes itself a center from which the evangelizing testimony goes forth; Jerusalem thus gradually loses the metropolitan place which, even as to the gospel and the Church, it had held in the earliest days of apostolic ministry; and eventually every trace of difference between Jew and Gentile disappears, being swallowed up in that transcendent grace which gathers out from both those who form the one body of the earth-rejected but heaven-enthroned Christ.

No one can read the New Testament without perceiving, that it is to this new assembly, formed at Pentecost, and gradually developed by the power of the indwelling Holy Ghost, till it embraced Gentiles as well as Jews, that the word “Church” is familiarly and habitually applied. “And the Lord added to the church.” “And great fear came upon all the church.” “At that time there was a great persecution against the church.” “As for Saul, he made havoc of the church.” “A whole year they assembled themselves with the church.” “Herod the king stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the church.” “Prayer was made without ceasing of the church.” “The church that was at Antioch.” When they were come and had gathered the church together.” “Being brought on their way by the church.” “When they were come to Jerusalem, they were received of the church.” “Then pleased it the apostles and elders, with the whole church.” “When he had landed at Caesarea, and gone up and saluted the church.” “All the flock over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.” “The church of God which is at Corinth.” “As I teach everywhere in every church.” “Set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church.” “Give none offense, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God.” “And God hath set some in the church.” “He that prophesieth edifieth the church.” “Beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it,” “Head over all things to the church.” “Christ is the head of the church.” “Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it.” “Nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church.” “I speak concerning Christ and the church.” “He is the head of the body, the church.” “For his body's sake, which is the church.” “Nymphas, and the church which is in his house.” “The church of the Laodiceans.” “The church of the Thessalonians.” “The house of God, which is the church of the living God.” “The church in thy house.” “The church of the firstborn.” “Let him call for the elders of the church.” “Which have borne witness of thy charity before the church.” “I wrote unto the church.” “The church in Ephesus, Smyrna,” &c. Such are the occurrences of the word in the New Testament. We have not used a concordance in giving them, and the list may not, therefore, be quite complete. Where the word is used in the plural “churches” we have not given it. But can any one seriously glance through these passages, and deny that they speak of a body or community actually existing on earth, and which only began to exist on earth at Pentecost? Some speak indeed of that body in its totality, from the commencement to the close of its existence on earth: such, for instance, as style it, “the church of God,” “the church, which is his body,” viz., the body of Christ. Others treat of such a portion of this whole, as exists at any given time, in one place or district, and which forms “the church of God” or “the body of Christ” in that place. Some even contemplate the gathering of those who, in their particular sphere, constitute “the body the church,” in this or that believer's house. But where is there a passage which intimates, not to say affirms, that Old Testament saints, or saints on earth during the millennium, form part of the church? If any one maintain that this is the case, it is on him surely that the burden of proof rests. It is the more important to observe this, seeing that we are not aware of any who do maintain, that the Church existed as such, on earth, in Old Testament times; and as to millennial saints, most pre-millenarians would, at all events, allow, that the Church will be in some such sense complete at the beginning of the thousand years, as to be reigning with Christ throughout that period. If then the Old Testament saints are to form part of the church in glory; and if even millennial saints are ultimately to be incorporated therewith, it must be by some act, or acts, of divine power, apart from that which formed the Church on earth at Pentecost, and which continues the process of its formation throughout the present period. And where are we told in scripture of any such act of divine power? And if no such scripture testimony be produced by our brethren, how can we be expected to assent to their conclusions?

But it is time we turned to a more detailed examination of the two papers in the Quarterly Journal. The first begins by allowing that there are “great diversities of degree” among “the innumerable company of angels;” while the next paragraph makes the following important admission: “Analogous to these diversities in that race of unfallen beings, we find among the redeemed from among the fallen considerable diversity of rank and position.” The well-known parable of the talents is first cited; and then we read, “we find mention of the 'general assembly and church of the first-born,' as well as of the spirits of ‘just men made perfect,' even as we find in the Apocalypse, not only an innumerable company that no man can number, but also a special subdivision of that company, the 144,000 whose song none can learn.” It is not to canvass these statements that we quote them, but to show how much is admitted in favor of the principle, that all the redeemed have not necessarily the same place in the scene of future glory. How far the subsequent reasonings of our contemporary, especially in the second paper, can be reconciled with these primary admissions, is another question. It is satisfactory to find that these admissions are made. For more than a distinction between “the church of the first-born,” and “the spirits of just men made perfect,” we should scarcely ourselves contend. We are told, moreover, that “these distinctions in glory are subservient, no doubt, to the manifestation of divine sovereignty in the ages to come. New Jerusalem is not built on a flat plain, nor are its palaces all of one height, and after one model. The land of uprightness has its hills and mountains, its fields and its gardens. One star differeth from another star in glory.”

But this is not the whole of what the paper before us concedes. “As to the millennial day,” says the writer, “we see it quite consistent with the analogy of divine arrangement elsewhere and at other times, that there should be the risen saints above, and on earth a vast population, like the sea and its waves, who are holy and spiritual men, but are not glorified.” The difference is, in this case, attributed to the fact of the millennial saints serving on a different platform from “those who lived amid temptation when Satan was loose, and are therefore rewarded then with the rank of kings.” Whether these kings and subjects can both alike form the body of Christ (the one class, as this article puts it, being “raised up members of Christ,” and the other, “members of Christ who have not passed through death and resurrection); whether scripture speaks of both as “members of Christ,” is part of the question in debate. There can be no question as to the one class; and if scripture does anywhere speak of the other in such terms, nothing can be easier than to produce the passages. All that we now wish to point out is this, that our brethren admit the existence, for the whole millennial period, of differences between the millennial saints, and those whom we believe the New Testament calls “the church” —differences of no less magnitude than those which distinguish men in the flesh from risen and glorified saints. According to the “Quarterly Journal,” the saints of the present period, whom we believe to be what scripture terms “the Church,” will, throughout the thousand years, be reigning with Christ in glory, while multitudes of saints will be still on earth in bodies of flesh and blood. We contend for no such difference as this between “the Church,” and Old Testament saints. We believe that the latter will, with the former, be raised and glorified at the descent of Jesus into the air; and that both will reign with Christ throughout the millennial period. We believe them, nevertheless, to be distinct; and when the writer of this paper in the “Quarterly Journal” shows how the differences he admits between glorified and earthly saints are, for a thousand years, “consistent with the analogy of divine arrangements,” we will, by the self-same arguments, show the consistency therewith of such differences between the Church and Old Testament saints as scripture appears to us to recognize.

“But,” says the article before us, “nothing of all this affects the question we propose to consider. Does THE BRIDE include the Old Testament saints? That is, it does not necessarily affect that question: for there may be all these diversities, and yet all belong to the one bride,” &c. To this we reply, that the admitted existence of certain differences, is, of course, no proof that certain others exist. But if, as is the case in the second article, these other differences are denied, not on the ground of their separate and intrinsic character, but because all who are redeemed, justified, called, and belong to Christ, must therefore “have all things” — “the highest blessings,” which any of them enjoy—then the differences, admitted at the opening of this first paper, do most materially “affect the question.” They so far affect it that the one paper upsets the other. The reasonings of the latter article are as decisive against the admissions of the former, as against the views which both are intended to contravene. If, as the second article contends, “heaven is not made a transcript of they dispensational differences of earth,” how can “the general assembly and church of the first-born” “be distinguished, as the first paper admits it is, from “the spirits of just men made perfect” “Be it, if you please, that the writer of the first paper supposes them to be distinguished only as a part is distinguished from the whole. That is a very real distinction; and it is certainly, in this case, supposed to be “a transcript of the dispensational differences of earth.” If “the differences of earth, dispensational or individual, do not continue in heaven,” (second paper, page 105,) how can the author of such a statement reconcile it either with the admissions of the first paper, or with those he is himself compelled to make, where he says “there will, indeed, be difference of reward among the members of the one redeemed family, as is taught in the words, 'Be thou over ten cities: be thou over five cities?' “He cannot consistently make the exclusion of difference absolute against us, and partial in regard to such differences as he and the writer of the first paper allow. Differences in heaven are absolutely excluded on the grounds alleged by this writer, or they are not. If they are, he is proved inconsistent with himself, and the second paper absolutely subversive of the first. If they are not, their exclusion cannot be used absolutely against the particular difference in debate; and yet this writer argues thus when his object is to condemn, as subversive of foundation truth, the sentiments of those who hold it as dear and as sacred as he can do himself! But more of this anon. We only, at present, remark on the admissions made by the first writer, and the bearing they have on the question under review.

The first writer gives a list of arguments said by him to have been alleged against the thought of the Old Testament saints forming part of “the Bride.” At these and the writer's replies we will glance seriatim; but we would, in the first place, protest against the idea that we, or any of whom we know, are anxious to prove that the Old Testament saints will not form part of “the Church,” or “Bride of Christ,” in glory. In itself, this seems to us a very subordinate question: and any prominence which may have been given to it has arisen from the efforts made, first, to assume that Old Testament saints will form part of the glorified Church; and secondly, on this ground, to depress the standard of present Church privilege and enjoyment to the level of what was proper to Old Testament saints. It is this studied and laborious effort to depreciate the Church, or rather the grace manifested towards the Church, which is so evil in its character, and withering in its influence. Supposing its full place given to what God reveals as to the present standing, calling, portion, and hope of the Church, and questions yet entertained as to whether ultimately the Old Testament saints may not become part of it in glory, nothing could be happier than humbly and lovingly to inquire together, what foundation there is in scripture for such a thought. But to assume that the Old Testament saints will surely form part of the Church in glory, and to use this assumption, where it gains credit, to deny all that is at present distinctive of the place and portion assigned to the Church by rich and sovereign grace—this is what cannot be too firmly withstood.

We do not remember anywhere to have seen 1 Peter 1:12 quoted to show that the Church will hold a place in glory distinct from that of Old Testament saints. It may have been quoted, and fairly, to show the superiority of the present dispensation to those of former times. Nor 2nd, do we remember Heb. 1, to have been so quoted. We have no doubt that “the heavenly calling” is an expression of wider import than “the church.” The fact is, that they against whom the arguments of the second paper are directed (and it is with these only that we are concerned), hold, and are often reproached for holding, that the mystery of the Church's unity by the Holy Ghost with Christ in heaven was specially revealed to Paul, and so not treated of by Peter, who was the apostle of the circumcision, nor even by Paul himself when writing to his Hebrew brethren. The truths ministered by Peter, James, and John, were all, we need not say, consistent with those specially revealed to Paul. Paul, moreover, writes on other subjects as no one would but he, to whom “this dispensation of the grace of God,” as he terms it, had been confided. But it is in Ephesians and Colossians that the subject is formally developed. And so we pass to the 3rd argument, said by the writer to be alleged against the thought of the Old Testament saints forming part of the Church. As it relates to a passage which has largely been discussed in connection with the question before us, we would consider it somewhat more fully. But let us hear the article under review.

“On no stronger grounds,” it says, “is Eph. 3:6, brought forward as excluding them, 'that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel.' It is assumed too often, that the 'mystery' was something else than the discovery of that hidden truth, that not Jew only, but Gentile, should share in what Christ had done, not Judea only, but in the end all the world. The promise of the inheritance was not meant here to be spoken of as peculiar to saints of New Testament times. The old saints sang in David's days, and David led the song, 'The righteous shall inherit the earth,' and that pointed to the inheritance which the bride has claim to.” This is the whole of what is said in reply to all that has been advanced, not only on the text quoted from Eph. 3 but on the doctrine of the epistle throughout. In reply we would observe, 1, You cannot depreciate the portion of “the bride,” without equally depreciating the inheritance of the Bridegroom. The very words, expressive of their relation to each other, imply the bride's participation in all that can be shared with her by her Lord. 2. Can then Christ's inheritance, as revealed in the Epistle to the Ephesians, be brought down to the measure of such Old Testament promises as the one here quoted, that “the righteous shall inherit the earth?” “That pointed,” we are told, “to the inheritance which the Bride has claim to!” Yes, and so does the sovereignty of Rutland belong to the Queen of Great Britain! But what would be thought of any one who, in treating of the dominions to which the Prince of Wales is heir, should say, “He is to have the sovereignty of Rutland?” The illustration may appear extreme, but the proportion between Rutland and the British Empire is far greater than between “the earth” and Christ's “inheritance,” as set forth in the Epistle to the Ephesians. We read there, of the good pleasure which God hath purposed in Himself, in the dispensation of the fullness of times, to gather together (or head up) in one “all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth” (1:10). We read of the working of the mighty power of God, “which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenlies, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come, and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things,” (observe it, dear reader!) “to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him which filleth all in all.” (1:20, 23). It is in this headship over all things in heaven as well as on earth, that the Church is associated with Christ, as His body, His fullness. 3. It is after having declared this, and treated of the breaking down of the middle wall of partition by the cross, Jew and Gentile becoming, in Christ Himself, “one new man,” even the Jewish sanctuary being superseded and replaced by this living temple, this “habitation of God through the Spirit” —it is after all this, that the apostle begins to treat of “the mystery.” 4. It has not been “assumed,” as the writer in the Quarterly Journal states, but largely proved, that the “mystery” was something else than the discovery, that not Jew only, but Gentile, should share in what Christ had done, not Judea only, but in the end all the world. Let any one read Eph. 3 and the latter part of Col. 1 and say whether the apostle does not evidently labor to express, that what had been revealed to him, and by him made known to others, was something new, unprecedented, unique, and previously unrevealed, unheard of, and unknown. But could the matter have been truly represented thus, if all that he meant by “the mystery” was, that Gentiles share in what Christ had done? So far from this being a mystery hid in God, there is nothing which had been more definitely revealed. Had it not been promised and sworn to Abraham, “In thee shall all families,” and “In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed?” Had not Moses said, “Rejoice, O ye nations, with his people?” Had not both Psalms and prophets largely testified, that “all the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the Lord"? that “Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands to God"? that in the true Solomon, men shall be blessed, yea, and “all nations call him blessed?” Was he not to “sprinkle many nations,” and to be “a light to the Gentiles,” and God's “salvation to the ends of the earth?” As every one acquainted with the subject knows, such quotations might be greatly multiplied. How then can it be supposed by any, that it was a “hidden truth,” “the mystery” for the first time revealed in the apostolic age, that Gentiles “should share in what Christ had done?” 5. But while the Old Testament explicitly foretells that Gentiles should partake of salvation through Christ, it is always as distinct from Israel, and subordinate thereto, that they are represented in the ancient scriptures. “Ten men shall take hold, out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you.” Jerusalem is to be called the throne of the Lord; the sons of strangers are to build up her walls, feed the flocks of her sons, and be their plowmen and vine-dressers; while they themselves are named “the priests of the Lord,” “the ministers of our God.”

Such are the conditions of Gentile blessing as revealed in the Old Testament, and to be accomplished in the ensuing dispensation. For though certain principles embodied in the prophecies on this subject may and do apply to the present period, it is in the millennium they are to be definitely fulfilled. But “the mystery,” of which Paul says so much in Ephesians and Colossians, is that of the present formation of a body, in which all distinction between Jew and Gentile is unknown, by virtue of the union and identification of both with a rejected and glorified Christ. The very verse, quoted in the article we review, speaks of Gentile believers, not only as fellow-heirs, but also “of the same body.” That they should be of the same body, even with Jews, had never been intimated: but that both should be of the same body with Christ, constituting the body of which He is the glorified Head, this was a mystery indeed, the existence and revelation of which amply justifies all that the apostle says.

We have no recollection of Luke 7:28 being used by any in proof of the special place and distinctive glory of the Church. This is the fourth passage alleged to have been so used. It may, like Peter 1:12, have been employed to show the superiority of the present over former dispensation's: but no one who understands the doctrine impugned in the two articles under review would urge this passage in its support. “The kingdom of God,” or “of heaven,” evidently includes the subjects of the heavenly rule thus designated. The members of the Church are doubtless individually, while on earth, subjects of God's kingdom; but the relation of the Church, as a whole, to Christ, is that of His bride, His body, whose place is to participate in His reign, instead of being its subjects.

(To be continued.)

What Is the Church? Do the Old Testament Saints Form Part of It? Part 3

Heb. 11:40 is treated at considerable length in both papers. In the former it is first sought to be shown that the passage says nothing in favor of any special place being assigned to saints of the present period; and then it is used as a positive argument for the equality of the Old Testament saints with these. The second paper still further considers the passage in both points of view. But the doctrine of the one paper seems to us utterly subversive of that taught by the other. The writer of the January article reasons from what he judges “the better thing” provided for us to be; but in April we are told that the passage “does not teach that God had provided something better for us than for them.” The explanation of “the better thing” in the first article we are quite at a loss to understand. First, it is urged “that the apostle was speaking of what these Old Testament saints were yet to obtain (the italics are not ours) in connection with us and along with us.” Then it is argued that “they were not without us to be made perfect (i.e., thoroughly set at rest from guilt, and introduced into full confidence toward God”). Are we then really to suppose that these departed saints have yet to obtain rest from guilt, and full confidence toward God? No such depreciation of Old Testament saints as this can justly be charged on such as hold them to be distinct from what scripture calls “the church.”

The second paper proposes a new version of the passage altogether. “But if the central clause be placed, as it should be, in a parenthesis, and if the ellipsis be supplied, then all appearance of ambiguity is removed. These all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise, (God having made a better provision for us than that, viz., that they should at present receive the promise,) in order that they, apart from us, should not be perfected.” This is indeed a bold proposal. To insert the demonstrative pronoun “that,” and then explain it, as though it were a part of the passage, inserting the explanation also, as a mere supplying of an ellipsis, is to use a liberty with God's word by which it might be made to say anything. In this instance it is used to make the passage say the very opposite of what is said by the words actually found in the Greek. But let us hear what is said in favor of the change.

“The substantive instruction of the passage is contained in the first and last clauses they received not the promise, in order that they might not be perfected apart from us. (χωρὶς ἡμπῶν.) The central parenthetic clause does not teach that God had provided something better for us than for them (that would contradict the word χωρὶς, apart from); but it teaches that he had provided for us a better thing than to allow that they should be perfected apart from us. The word χωρὶς (apart from) could not on the other supposition, have been used; for if we had the calling and glory of the Church, and they not, then, indeed, they and we should be perfected apart one from the other, the very thing which this verse declares to be impossible.” On all this we remark: 1. that to read the central clause parenthetically is a purely gratuitous change, uncalled for by anything in the passage, which makes good sense just as the translators have left it. 2. To read it parenthetically creates the ellipsis which the writer supplies, and which exists not as the passage stands. 3. The construction of the passage is against the reading the central clause as a parenthesis. The words περὶ ἡμπῶν and χωρὶς ἡμῶν so connect the two phrases, ( “a better thing for us,” “that they without us,”) as to make the latter dependent on the former. But if so, how could the former be part of a parenthesis? 4. So far is χωρὶς from excluding the idea of their perfection (that of Old Testament saints) being different from ours, that it is used in passages where similar differences are undeniably recognized. “Without (χωρὶς) me, ye can do nothing.” Does the word here exclude all difference of dignity or glory or power between Christ and His disciples? “The man is not without (χωρὶς) the woman in the Lord.” Does this mean that they are in all respects equal? Why, the whole drift of the passage is in proof of the man's superiority. That is, the word is used in scripture in a sense quite different from that which this writer wishes to fix upon it absolutely in the passage under consideration.

As to the passage itself, and its bearing on the question in debate, so far from its being “the text most relied on to prove that the Old Testament saints are” not included in the glorified Church, we know of no work in which it is so urged. There may be such works, but they have not fallen under our notice. We ourselves have long hesitated as to whether by “the better thing provided for us,” was meant our present dispensational privileges, or some special place of future glory, and have never therefore relied on the passage as a proof of the latter. But the present discussion inclines us, more than previously, to the latter view. The distinction made but a few verses farther on between “the spirits of just men made perfect,” and “the Church of the first-born ones which are written in heaven,” certainly seems to teach that the class denominated “spirits of just men,” will, when made perfect, which is only in resurrection, be still distinct from “the church of the first-born ones written in heaven.”

The January article closes with a series of numbered paragraphs, which, after all that has been considered, may be very briefly dispatched.

“Does the Church not mean the whole body of the redeemed?” The answer is, this is precisely the question at issue, to which these articles give an affirmative, and we a negative reply. Neither therefore can assume their own view, and reason from it, as the writer here does.

If the redeemed all form Christ's body, then all of them of the Old Testament, even as of the New, shall rise to the same glory.” Yes, but first prove that “Christ's body” and “the redeemed” are interchangeable terms. Christ is never spoken of as head of the body except as risen and ascended. If He is, let the passages be brought forward. To produce Isa. 26:19, and thus represent Christ as the head of a “dead body” (!) is the plainest possible confession that no texts more to the purpose could be found by the writer, in the Old Testament.

3. “The Queen in gold of Ophir” is represented by the writer of Psa. 45 as the bride of “the king.” The psalm consists of things he had made “touching the King.” No doubt there are principles in common between such scriptures as the Song of Solomon and this psalm, and those in the New Testament which treat of the Church's bridal relation to Christ. Much found in the one may thus, for uses of edification, be applied to the subject of the other. But, still, the subject is distinct. Jerusalem is the King's bride. It is of her that Ezek. 16, Isa. 54, and Hos. 2 treat. It is to her people that it is said, “Thy maker is thine husband;” of her land that it is written, “thy land shall be married;” and of herself; “as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee.” But the Church is “the bride, the Lamb's wife.” Betrothed and affianced to Him, during His rejection by Israel and the earth—the lone companion of that rejection, and inheritor of the griefs of which, as the Father's faithful witness and servant, He drank so full a cup—it is in that character of heavenly grace in which alone she has known and confessed her unseen and absent Lord, that she is to be associated with Him in the glory, in that day when the glory shall be revealed.

The remarks on the transfiguration take for granted that to be glorified with Christ is equivalent to being “of the church, or bride.” But there is nothing said either of the body or bride of Christ in the scripture accounts of the transfiguration. It was “the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” of which the favored three beheld a specimen in the holy mount; and we know of none who question that Old Testament saints will, equally with those who compose the Church, be raised and glorified at Christ's coming.

The reasoning on the types needs no comment, as there is not even the pretense of giving scripture authority for the application of them made by the writer. Many seriously dispute that the cherubim were types of the Church.

6. The psalms are referred to in proof that Old Testament saints are to rise in the first resurrection, and to reign as kings in the millennial age. Neither of these positions should we for a moment think of disputing. But when it is said that “the general import and drift of such passages evidently is, that these saints were led by the Holy Spirit to look for the same honor as we of the New Testament Church are led to expect,” it does but mournfully evince how this system of interpretation reduces what it calls “the New Testament Church” to the standard of Old Testament truths.

We turn now for a moment to the second paper that we may not omit noticing anything it contains. Its leading arguments have been already considered in their connection with, or contradiction to, the previous article. It opens by denouncing the doctrine which distinguishes between the Church and the Old Testament saints, as “strange,” “novel,” “disastrous in its consequences,” and “necessarily affecting that which the scripture reveals respecting the redemption that is in Christ.” These are heavy charges, indeed so heavy that they ought not to be made unless supported by the most substantial proofs. What then are the proofs by which such charges are supported in the present instance? The only proof alleged is a most glaring misrepresentation of what the question at issue is; and the only evidence brought forward in support of the charge is a quotation which completely repels it. But our readers shall judge for themselves. The question is stated in the following terms: -

“Surely there can be no more important question than this—what is it that gives title of entrance into the Church and all the Church's blessings? Is it not simply and only the redemption that is in the blood of Jesus?” Undoubtedly it is; and woe to the man whose hopes are based on any other foundation. But is it on the question of the Church's title to glory that this writer is at issue with those whom he opposes? God forbid! They acknowledge, at least equally with him, that redemption in the blood of Christ is the only ground on which any of Adam's race can be entitled to a place in glory. But it is a pure fallacy of this writer to suppose, because the title is the same, that there can be no diversities of glory among those who all, and all alike, owe their blessedness to the blood of Christ, and to that blood alone. Has God ceased to be a sovereign because in His grace He has given Christ to accomplish redemption by His blood? Is the Holy One so limited by His own purely gratuitous provision for man's recovery, as to be precluded by it from bestowing various dignities on those whose only title to anything but perdition is the precious blood of Christ, and the grace which places its value to their account? Let this writer account for the immeasurable difference between the glorified saints and the saved inhabitants of the millennial earth throughout the thousand years; let him show how this diversity can consist with the blessedness of both being based solely on the value of Christ's blood; and let his explanation be what it may, it will serve equally to show how any distinction that God may please to make between one portion of the redeemed and another, throughout eternal ages, is consistent with the same blessed fact.

Besides, what becomes of the millennial saints They either form part of the Church or they do not. If they do, then all the arguments about the Old Testament saints having part in the first resurrection, and reigning with Christ go for nothing; for here are myriads of the Church who evidently do not share in either. If they do not form part of the Church, then all the reasoning about redemption is null; for here are saints redeemed by Christ's blood, who instead of constituting the Church, are living on the earth, while the Church reigns in glory with her Lord.

But the article under review asserts dogmatically that “the heavenly city is a symbol of corporate condition. It represents the glory of the Church as a whole.” “As a whole,” let it be remembered: and so positive is the writer on this point, that he adds, “Not to belong to it is spoken of as equivalent to perdition.” Now when is it, we ask, that the Church answers to this symbol of its glory “as a whole?” Is it only in the post-millennial, eternal state? Or does not the detailed description of it, as shown to John by the angel, exhibit it in connection with the millennial earth? Are not the leaves of its tree of life for the healing of the nations? And do not the nations [of the saved] walk in the light of the heavenly city. Still “it represents,” says this writer, “the glory of the Church as a whole.” Clearly, then, the saved nations of the millennial earth do not form part of the Church: and the conclusion drawn by others as to Old Testament saints, and condemned by him as affecting fundamental truth, follows necessarily, as to millennial saints, from what he himself affirms.

If it should be pleaded that they belong to the Church prospectively, that though not forming part of the city—the Bride—during the thousand years, they are afterward to be incorporated with it, we answer, that such a plea can never be admitted. First, because it contradicts the writer's own assertion that “the heavenly city represents the glory of the Church as a whole.” Secondly, because it contradicts scripture. Is it not at the beginning of the thousand years that it is said, “the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready?” But how “ready,” if myriads who are to form part of her are yet unborn? And when our Lord says, not of His disciples only who surrounded Him, but of all who should believe on Him through their word, “the glory which thou gavest me I have given them: that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them and thou in me, that they be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as thou hast loved me,” to what epoch does He look forward for the accomplishment of these things? Are they accomplished in the millennial period, when the millennial world beholds in the heavenly city the proof that the Father has loved the saints composing it as He loved His Son if so, the nations of that period are not part of the Church, for it is already “made perfect in one;” and the nations are spoken of as “the world,” distinct and apart from the heavenly saints. And if it be said, in accordance with the objection we are examining, that not till the end of the thousand years will the words of our Lord be accomplished, that the millennial saints are included among those to whom He gives the glory which has been given to Him, and who are finally to be made perfect in one, where in that case is “the world of which our Lord speaks, as knowing by the glory of the Church how the Father has sent the Son and loved the Church as He loved the Son? No “such world” will exist in the eternal state, at least according to the system we are considering: and if its existence could be supposed, it would subvert the system altogether. It is, in fact, untenable. It contradicts itself, and contradicts God's word; and the writer of this second article argues as though he would conceal its inherent weakness by the severity with which he censures the views with which his own system stands contrasted.

Having misstated the point in debate, by representing it as a question between him and others as to the title of entrance into the Church, he proceeds to charge his opponents with excluding Old Testament saints from “the great result of redemption altogether," and asks, “And what is the ground of this supposed exclusion? Abraham and the Old Testament saints, say they, are to be excluded, because they did not receive, whilst on earth, the Holy Spirit in the same manner as we have received it who have lived since Pentecost. Such is the doctrine of the appended passage. (A passage extracted from “Plain Papers,” &c.) Thus it is taught that our title to belong to the Church of God in glory does not depend on that which we are in Christ, but on that which we are in the Spirit.” Would the reader credit it, that the extract from “Plain Papers” which is thus stigmatized, is one in which the following sentences occur? After mentioning Abraham, Moses, and others, as men of faith and referring to the brightness of their devotion and obedience, it affirms, “They were quickened by the Spirit beyond all doubt. By virtue of the foreseen sacrifice of Christ, they were forgiven and saved. They will all have part in the first resurrection and partake of heavenly glory. There can be no question as to any of these things...... The church shares these things, life, justification, resurrection, and heavenly glory, with the saints of Old Testament times; but what constitutes the Church is something distinct from and beyond all these things. It is the actual living unity with Christ and with each other of those who, since Christ's resurrection, are formed into this unity by the Holy Ghost come down from heaven. Was there anything like this in Old Testament times?” (Plain Papers, p. 83.) Can the reader see in this extract any justification of the charges above quoted from the “Quarterly Journal?” Will the writer in the “Quarterly Journal” himself affirm that anything like what is here described existed in Old Testament times? Will he deny that it is this which “constitutes” the Church? Cannot he distinguish between what constitutes a body, and that which entitles anyone to belong to it? Might not the same title, the will of a monarch, for instance, introduce a person both to the family of that monarch and to his cabinet council? But are both constituted alike? Because it was the will of Her Majesty which alone entitled a person to be her secretary of state, must he needs be her consort also? And if this writer in the “Quarterly Journal” has in his haste overlooked so obvious and important a distinction, ought he to make his own carelessness the ground of impugning the orthodoxy of a writer, who, in the very extract produced, (the only one, moreover, that is produced,) repudiates the charge now sought to be fastened upon him? “The sacrifice of Christ” is the alone title mentioned or recognized in the extract, and it is alike recognized for the Church and for the Old Testament saints.

Again, to confound, as the writer does, Christ's headship of “his body the Church” with that federal headship of all the redeemed, in regard to which the first Adam, our sinful federal head, was a “figure of him that was to come,” is merely to evince total unacquaintance with what scripture teaches on the former subject. Are we members of Adam's body of his flesh, and of his bones, or merely his offspring? Eve was bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. The Church is such to Christ, and not merely possessed of a life derived from Him, as is the case with all the redeemed people of the second Adam, the Lord from heaven.

The argument from Galatians is based on a mere assumption: viz., that in it “we who live in. this Pentecostal dispensation, are taught respecting our own final blessings.” This language is evidently used to express our own highest as well as final blessings. But where does the Epistle itself inform us that it is of our highest blessings that it treats? Many of those blessings of which it does treat we doubtless share with saints of other dispensations. But our being, in so many respects, “blessed with faithful Abraham,” by no means proves that nothing special attaches to saints of the present dispensation. As to the editorial note on this paragraph, (asserting that the question discussed by the apostle was, “Are believers in Christ really to get up to Abraham's privileges and standing?”) we would ask, Does the editor forget the occasion of the Epistle? Were not certain teachers pretending that it was not enough to believe in Christ, but that to enjoy the benefits of the Abrahamic covenant the Gentile converts must become Jewish proselytes, be circumcised, and keep the law of Moses? To be children of Abraham had been held out to the Galatians by their deceivers as something most desirable, and as only to be attained by obedience to the law. “You are children of Abraham already,” was the apostle's answer: nay, more, “children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.” A most pertinent, blessed answer to the sophistry of those who would have subverted their souls. But certainly it is not in connection with such reasonings that we should look for a development of the highest privileges of the saints. Being Christ's we are Abraham's seed, because He is “the seed” to whom the promises were made. But has Christ no higher title than that of “the seed of Abraham?” Why say then that He has no greater or higher blessedness in which to associate us with Himself than that of being Abraham's seed.

It is of the believers at Colosse, and of their fellow believers in the present dispensation, that Paul predicates the being “circumcised in Christ.” So that whatever this expression may imply, its use by the apostles in the passage referred to can prove nothing as to Old Testament saints.

No doubt we are taught in Heb. 7 that Abraham had “THE PROMISES.” But this is an unfortunate quotation, to prove that no expression could “be more unlimited than that;” seeing that the whole drift of the passage is to show that even Melchizedec, another Old Testament saint, was greater than Abraham.

No one questions that Abraham looked for a heavenly city; but when the writer says, “that heavenly city is elsewhere termed the bride, the Lamb's wife,'“ we must be excused for asking some proof of his assertion. If heaven itself, as the object of Abraham's hope, is mentioned in Scripture under the figure of “a city,” as well as “a country,” are we obliged to identify, it with “that great city, the holy Jerusalem,” which was shown to John “descending out of heaven from God!” Why should we conclude, if a city be named, that it must be the one city of Rev. 21; 22? Or if a marriage, or bride, be spoken of, why must it of necessity be “the marriage of the Lamb,” “the bride, the Lamb's wife?”

Against one misapprehension we must, in concluding, guard. We would not be supposed to confound individual faithfulness with corporate privileges. Many a saint in olden times, with immeasurably inferior light and privileges, walked more closely with God than many, perhaps we might say most, of those to whom the special calling and glory of the Church have been vouchsafed. The righteous Judge of all will surely know how to reward the individual, while His own rich sovereign grace is equally magnified in the blessings common to all, the blessings distinctive of each class, and the new name in the white stone for the individual, secret token as it will be of what is known only to the individual and his Lord.

The Lord keep us near to Himself, and subject in everything to His word.

The Coming of the Lord and the Translation of the Church

(An Attempt to answer the questions, “May the Coming of the Lord be expected immediately? and will the translation of the Church be secret?” By George J. Walker. London: Whittaker & Co, 12. Ave Maria Lane. 1857.

No. 1.6. Vol. I.-Sept 1, 1857.)

DIRECT testimony to the existence of a Jewish remnant with Jewish hopes, sanctioned of the Lord, having been published elsewhere, and the doctrine of the Church also having been brought out, as connected with the Lord's coming, the object here is to examine, in a supplementary notice, some difficulties which a serious mind might find in the suggestions of those who oppose the rapture of the Church. It is true that if the statements of scripture be adequately weighed, and the truths which have been drawn from it received into the heart, the answer to all these difficulties is already possessed; or if we be unable to explain these objections, they have no force against the direct proofs scripture gives of the truth, save to prove our own incapacity to solve them.

Thus, it is insisted on, in the pamphlet before us, pp. 13, 14, that we wait with the world for the appearing of Christ. “In 1 Thess. 5:1-4, after speaking of the day of the Lord coming on toe world as a thief in the night, the apostle adds, 'But ye, brethren, are not in darkness that that day should overtake you as a thief.' The natural inference being, that the day of the Lord will come simultaneously upon the world and the Church; only it will find the latter prepared for it, while it will be destruction to the former.” Now, take the plain expression of one passage, which sums up the declarations of many, “when Christ, who is our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.” It at once shows that, whatever may be the divine reasons for referring us to the Lord's appearing, as a time of blessing, or in connection with our responsibility (and scripture does both), it is perfectly certain that it is not meant that we shall not be with Christ before He appears, nor that we shall be personally on earth as others are, so that He will appear to us and the earth at the same time. This we know to be false doctrine; because the word tells us that we shall then appear, or be manifested, along with Him, But we learn more as to the teaching of those who would persuade us of it. The aim of that teaching, its direct and necessary tendency, is to destroy our distinctive relationship with Christ, and to connect us with the world, reducing us to the lowest possible level of hope which can be true for one who is not actually lost. Our proper heavenly connection with Christ is lost. This aim is accompanied by so obvious a loss of all spiritual intelligence, such an obliteration of the positive teaching of Christ and the Holy Ghost, that it becomes at once evident, to those not under its influence, what its source is.

Nor can anything he more groundless than the special objections. The first is a very favorite one of this school.” It [i.e. the view combated] takes away from us our direct and full interest in considerable portions of the gospels, and almost the whole of the Apocalypse; for these are regarded as strictly and properly belonging only to certain parties, Jews and Gentiles, which will come under the divine dealings after the removal of the Church,” &c. (pp. 5, 6). To talk, then, of robbing us of much in the Gospels and the Apocalypse is, we repeat, the more absurd, since the special privilege of the heavenly saints is to know what does not concern them. In virtue of this, they are “friends,” not because of having external signs given. To encourage the weak faith of the tried Jewish remnant they were really given, as will appear more clearly when we come to examine Matt. 24 and kindred scriptures.

But it is a hollow and false principle that the gift of a revelation to any one implies that he will be in the circumstances described: least of all is it true of the Church, to which all scripture is given. But thence to argue that we must be there, that this or that prediction is about us, is as unreasonable as contrary to fact. Yet ought the Church to have an understanding of all, for “we have the mind of Christ.” The Lord's grace communicates to us what concerns others, and sometimes that we may intercede for others. Thus it was with Abraham: the Lord revealed to him what did not concern himself. Did Abraham lose by the Lord's communicating to him what concerned Lot' or would he have gained by imagining that it was about himself? Was Enoch worse off than Noah because the one declared what was coming on the world, not on himself, and was translated before there was a sign of the judgment, while the other received a warning of what concerned the circumstances he was in, so that, moved with fear, he gave heed and was saved through the deluge of waters? So with the Church in the Revelation. None can deny that there is absolute silence as to the Church (we do not say saints) on earth when the terrible judgments symbolized by seals, trumpets, and vials, issue from the throne. Churches are spoken of before Rev. 4, and they are addressed after the visions close in Rev. 22. For, no doubt, the Church ought to be the vessel of divine testimony of what is coming, as Enoch was, and it ought to be in the place of intercession, as was Abraham; but the Church is outside the scene of judgment in the Revelation, as both these types were in Genesis.

But the second objection surrenders, in fact, the principles of which the first complains so loudly: for it is owned, though it seems reluctantly, that there are passages in the gospels (and a fortiori in the Revelation) where the apostles are not our representatives. Thus, while we are privileged to profit by Matt. 10, it is plain that the commission there given is, in important respects, the reverse of our service as Christians now. It is only through the Holy Ghost, enabling us to compare aright scripture with scripture, that we can discern what concerns a Jewish remnant of old or by and by, and that which describes or supposes our position. The author asks somewhat triumphantly in p. 7, “Do they represent us, and listen for us, at the sermon on the Mount, at the last supper, at the concluding discourses in John; and yet represent another set of people in the 24th of Matthew and 21St of Luke? Are we on church ground with Martha and Mary at Bethany; and in company with the Jewish remnant when we place ourselves with the disciples on the Mount of Olives?” (Matt. 24:3.) Now, so far are the distinctions in question of an arbitrary nature that the argument used to expose them demonstrates their reality. For, imbedded in the sermon, on the Mount are words of our Lord which apply far more closely to Jews or the remnant, than to the Church. (See Matt. 5:25; 6:12, 13, 33, &c.) And as to the prophetic discourse in Matt. 24, 25 it carries on its front, and within its own compass, the clearest evidence of these distinctions. For in the early part the Lord speaks of the temple and its destruction, of the abomination of desolation, with express reference to a prophecy which professedly relates to the Jews and the remnant up to the last days. But this is not all. What has this character, and is connected with Jerusalem, Judea, and that nation, is plainly distinguished from the parables which relate to Christians during the absence of the Lord (viz., the household servant, the virgins, and the talents). These last are not Jewish, but in some respects in marked contrast with what precedes, as well as with the closing sketch in Matt. 25 which gives the Lord's dealings with the Gentiles on His return as King. To deny these distinctions, then, is ignorance, and nothing better. Nobody affirms that the Church existed as a fact at the last supper in Jerusalem, or when the Lord uttered His discourses, &c., in John 13-17, or at Bethany; but it is to us very clear that these scenes contemplated much which was afterward verified in the Church, and outside the remnant, while the remnant had special provision for it made in Luke 21. Nothing simpler than what the writer seeks to mystify.

Again, in this latest defense of the system which denies the distinct portion of the Church and its rapture, previous to the Lord's appearing, the time of vengeance, in which even the Jewish remnant is desired to flee—the time of visiting the unbelief of the nation with anguish and trouble unheard of—in a word, the most awful chastisement for unfaithfulness the world ever saw, is confounded with the privilege of suffering for Christ by faith “A further objection to it is the extraordinary result, that the Church will be removed from the earth at the very time of all others, when we should think its testimony would be most needed, and when suffering will be most glorious. [M] Surely, of all others, the Church of Christ is best fitted to be confronted with the great Antichrist and his followers.. Strange, indeed, should its martyrology break off at that critical period! Strange if tribulations, closely linked in the Apocalyptic visions with the brightest glories of heaven, shall be reserved for another than that body, which for nearly two thousand years has been associated in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ!” — “Attempt,” p. 7. Can ignorance of God's ways be shown more painfully than this confusion of suffering with Christ, and suffering fearful penalty for having slighted Him and His will?

The last of these general presumptions is that scripture intimates delays and impediments to the coming of Christ (pp. 7, 8); and it is argued, that if to know what shall befall others be a privilege, still more what personally affects ourselves. Can anything exceed the blindness here manifested as to what spiritual privilege is? Is knowing what applies to ourselves the proof that we are friends of God? After Abraham had promises relative to himself and his seed, the Lord says, “Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do?” And what did He make known to him? What concerned himself? No; but what concerned Lot, which there was no need of. Lot heard in due time what concerned himself. So, says the Lord, in a scripture which the writer cites in the same paragraph, “I have called you friends, for whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known unto you.” I tell a man what concerns himself as a matter of business or duty; I tell my friend what my heart is interested in, whether it concerns him or not, because he is my friend. (Compare Eph. 1:8-10.) How entirely this system destroys spirituality and divine intelligence!

And here we would say a word on the practical effect as indicative of the real character of these views. We are told that it is impossible rightly to be expecting the Lord from day to day; and this because all the predicted signs must first come to pass. Now, we ask any serious Christian, if this be not in direct contradiction of all the teachings and warnings of scripture (those passages excepted, whose proper application is in debate)? Does the Lord direct us to be habitually waiting and watching always for Him? Be it Christian or Jewish remnant that He refers to, does He not insist earnestly upon it, and that in such an hour as those He addresses think not, the Son of man cometh?

Further, the whole order of God's dealings is subverted. “We do believe the Church and the remnant to be on earth together,” &c. (p.39.) That is, they believe that the full, explicit revelation of the Church, wherein is neither Jew nor Gentile but all one, and a recognition, on the part of God, of a body of persons, as to whom He sanctions hopes exactly contrary to this, furnishing inspired terms for the expression and encouragement of them, will go on together on the earth. As an analogy to this, the state of the disciples, during Jesus' life, and the condition of the Church afterward, and the case of the disciples of John (Acts 19), are brought forward. That is, the progress of the same saints out of Jewish thoughts into a Church standing, by the coming of the Holy Ghost, in the former case, and the instant cessation of the Jewish state of hope, because of the Christian revelation, when it came to their knowledge, in the other, are alleged to be analogous to the simultaneous sanctioned subsistence of the two contradictory states at the same time. The value of the reasoning here is a specimen of the superficiality of this publication.

Another sample of the extreme levity and carelessness of the writer is this. “To say that while we are here, it [the Apocalypse] is of use to us, is to plead for a very secondary concern in it.” (p. 6.) The view of the writer is that its warnings are to be of use to the Church when it is in the circumstances referred to. Is it not evident, then, according to the author's theory, that this destroys its usefulness, as to at least 1800 years and more, of the. Church's history? The necessity of being in the time of its fulfillment to make it useful destroys its constant use for the Church; whereas the knowledge of its application to a body traversing the time of trial, after the Church's rapture, makes its usefulness apply to all, though its accomplishment is for others. If men must be in the circumstances to render it useful, the Apocalypse has had, on the author's showing, no utility yet. 2 Peter 1:19, which he quotes, is strongly against his arguments, besides being altogether misinterpreted. The point here is the excellence of the prophetic word as a lamp, till a light still better dawn on the heart. The apostle does not mean till the day of the Lord actually come upon the world, but till the heart is imbued with daylight, and the morning star arise therein (i.e., till the saint is awakened to the heavenly hope, apart from the events of prophecy).

The parable of the tares of the field (Matt. 13) is the first of the special scriptures adduced as positively adverse. “'Both grow together until the harvest' (verse 30)-a statement clearly decisive of the whole question, for unbroken certainty cannot possibly be more plainly expressed” (p. 9),..."and at one definite point of time, the harvest, or the end of the age,” (p. 10.) The short answer is, that the harvest is not one definite point of time. “In the time of harvest,” it is written, “I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.” First do this, and then that. In other words, it is a period in which different events take place, the order and meaning of which is exactly what is in question, It is also alleged (p. 9) that “gathered together” is the same as “rooted up.” But it is no such thing: quite a different word is used for rooted up. Again, “gathering together,” or up, is said to be removal from the field by reaping or plucking up, that is the end of present existence—a very singular explanation. We all know such is not the effect of reaping. The removal of the wheat from the field is expressed in quite a different way. Indeed, the tares are never said to be removed from the field at all, and notoriously, if we turn to the thing prefigured, they will be judged in the field when the harvest comes; and to this the parable looks on. In truth, the subject is the field as to which there is one only exception— “Gather the wheat into my garner.” The thorns, we read elsewhere, will be utterly burned in the fire in the same place. The tares are gathered together to be burned—clearly declaring that the gathering together is not the final judgment.

Further, none can read the parable and its explanation without seeing that they describe different scenes, as is always the case in such prophetic statements, because public results before men explain what is parabolically stated when the results are not there. Thus, gathering the wheat into the garner is not shining forth as the sun, nor is gathering into bundles to be burnt the same as gathering out of the kingdom and casting them into the fire. Note here, that the uniform testimony of scripture is that the saints will appear, or be manifested, when Christ comes for judgment. (Col. 3; Rev. 17:14; 19) Hence the gathering the wheat into the garner must be before the gathering evils out of His kingdom and casting them into the furnace of fire. The making the heavenly saints to remain on earth, while the judgment is being executed, is against the universal statement of all scripture. And this is what is alleged. For if the gathering the tares in bundles to be burned be the same as their final burning (an allegation indeed manifestly absurd), then their complete judgment takes place before the saints are taken into the garner; “the end of present existence” as regards the tares is before the saints are with Christ. Further, the righteous shining forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father is clearly not in the present age, which the harvest of judgment closes. It is the new age, while the gathering into the garner is part of the harvest or end of this age. The harvest then, or end of the age, is certainly not one point of time. The Lord Himself states a “first” in what happens. The only question, then, is, Does the rapture of the saints take place before the execution of judgment? All scripture answers, yes. They come with Christ to judgment: they appear with Him in glory. The order of the parable and its explanation is, first, gathering the tares in bundles, then the wheat is put in the barn; and when it comes to the execution of judgment, the tares are gathered out of the kingdom and burnt, and the righteous shine forth as the sun.

One point of the old system is avoided. It used to be maintained that, when Christ rose up from the Father's throne, the present age closed. But the parable of the tares described the end of this age. Hence the judgment of the earth was before Christ came at all, and the catching up of the saints too. The absurdity of this was evident, and it is now avoided; but the elements of the error remain—only concealed. The harvest is made one definite point of time as the end of the age. If it be not Christ's rising up, it must be the moment of His executing judgment which closes it. Where are the heavenly saints then according to scripture? The wicked are punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord. When this judgment is executed, are the saints still unchanged on the earth, or already caught up? If still unchanged on the earth, and the resurrection yet to come, then is there a negative to all these statements together— “The Lord shall come with ten thousand of his saints;” “The Lord thy God shall come and all his saints with thee;” “They that are with him are called and chosen and faithful;” “The armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean;” “When Christ, our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.” But scripture declares these things positively. That is, the saints must have already been caught up to meet Him. But if so, the whole proffered explanation of the parable of the tares is false, and hangs on the blunder of interpreting the gathering of the tares together in bundles to be burned as meaning their actual burning, accompanied by the contradictory allegation that the harvest is one definite point of time. That any one should not see clear on such points is evidently to be borne with. We are all ignorant on many points.

On 2 Thess. 2. the less may be said, because it has been already entered into in a previous article. (Bible Treasury, pp. 237-239.) But it is well to note it as an additional specimen of this writer's reasoning. He says in p. 15, “Surely the terrors of the day of the Lord are for his enemies and the enemies of his people. How then could those terrors be present, and those enemies be unchecked in their cruel persecution of the Thessalonian saints? Could these saints have had such a notion?” Now the reasoning against the fact of the day's being there is most just. The only misfortune is that it is the apostle's own reasoning with the Thessalonians, because they thought the day was there, as Paul says in chap. 2:2, and as the writer quotes Mr. Alford, explaining it in the same page. “Its object is to make it clear to them that the day of Christ.... was not yet come.”

As to what is insinuated on Dan. 7, and the endeavor to connect the Son of man with the kingdom after the blasphemies of the little horn, the way of putting the matter is incorrect, and, to say the least, the one-sided result of prejudice. For the account of the reception of the kingdom is not merely after the horn's blasphemies, but after the beast's judgment and destruction for those blasphemies. So that, if it were just to apply the passage to the remaining of the Church on earth during the whole career of Antichrist, the passage would equally prove that the Church was on earth after the destruction of the beast. That is, the whole argument and application of the text is entirely groundless, for the heavenly saints come with Christ to judgment. The prophecy speaks of the earthly kingdom, first of the beasts, and then of the Son of man. The place or portion of the Church is not touched on at all in the statement. It is the kingdom under the whole heaven; while the following explanation of the prophecy (as all scripture) declares, that judgment is given to the saints of the Most High. It is but an additional proof how the whole tenor and bearing of scripture is lost by such as maintain this system. If we enter into details, we shall find that the thrones were set before the judgment begins and indeed in order to it.

As to the argument on Luke 19:11-27 in p. 11, (viz., that we are not to look for the Lord as our immediate hope now, because there was a premature expectation of the kingdom during His ministry on earth), it has really no force, nor even sense. Some then expected Messiah to appear in glory and deliver Israel. The Lord shows that, being rejected, He must go to the Father, receive a kingdom and return, and that meanwhile His own servants were to serve Him. Does that prove that His servants are not to expect Him now more than the Jews then? Strange reasoning!

Passages, such as John 16:2-4, which speak of trials and persecutions for the saints, need not be rested on. It was not the best but one of the strongest reasons for looking for Christ continually, who was to take the saints out of trouble. The sufferings of the disciples would make them desire His coming.

If we turn to the epistles, another class of texts to which reference is made (p. 12) is that which involves responsibility in connection with Christ's appearing. In order to understand such passages as 1 Tim. 6:14 some remarks are needed. The rapture of the Church has nothing to do with responsibility; it is the fulfillment of the highest blessings of sovereign grace—Christ's coming to take us to Himself, that where He is, there we may be also. Now, none but Paul ever speaks of the Church, save the Lord Himself, prophetically (Matt. 16; 18), or the historical facts that He added to it, &c., in the Acts. It was a mystery hidden in God; it is not named in the Epistles but by Paul—for we do not speak of allusions to a local church or churches. Various privileges of its members individually may be, but, however strange it may appear to some, in the Epistles none ever speaks of the Church itself, nor names it, but Paul. Hence none speaks of the rapture but he; for this is connected with its known privileges. Where the coming of Christ is spoken of elsewhere, it is spoken of as the time of judgment; or of the display of the effect of righteousness and of glory in the saints; or as a general expectation connected with the ways and government of God—a very distinct thing from the privileges conferred by sovereign grace. The judgment connected with Christ's coming includes the judgment of, and retribution to, the saints, because this is a part of His display of government, and not the portion of the saints, given them in sovereign grace in Christ. By the deniers of what is called the “rapture,” all this is mixed up together, for the counter-scheme is one of unmingled darkness.

Now, as regards the world, this manifestation for judgment is Christ's coming. The term coming, or presence, embraces all that passes in connection with His return, from the moment of His entrance into the created universe, be it heaven or earth. As regards the world, His coming may be called His appearing, His manifestation, the appearing of His coming, or, His Revelation. It has all these titles. The saints' joining Christ is never referred to anything but His coming; for when He appears, they appear with Him. Do they not wait for and love His appearing? To be sure they do. This removes evil and destroys the power of evil on the earth; in this they appear with Him in glory. The whole display of God's glory in righteousness and its fruit, blessing and power, takes place then; and those who groan under the sense of a creation subjected to the bandage of corruption, rejoice in the thought of its deliverance. The entire scene will be changed by Christ's taking the power, Satan being bound, and the rule of goodness and righteousness established. The saint cannot but delight in the thought of the setting up of the kingdom, the glory of Christ, and the blessing of man and creation. That everything should be ordered according to Christ's will is the joy of the heart. It is the time of the divine blessing in government. Oppression will cease, peace and true liberty will reign without evil, all God's promises be fulfilled, His goodness satisfied, and Christ glorified. As regards the government of this earth, it is what our hearts as we walk on it, and what we in our nature as creatures belonging to it, must desire. We love His appearing—the rising of that Sun of Righteousness with healing in His wings. That we shall not be those subject to this government, to the rightly-taught soul, enhances the joy of it, though, on the principle of wretched selfishness which characterizes the system we are combating, this may seem to enfeeble its interest for us. On any ground, we shall not be the subjects of that government, because we shall be glorified. But which is most blessed—the family in misery which is relieved, or he who has a share in relieving, and participates in grace in the joy of it? No properly ordered heart cart doubt a moment. All love His appearing, for Christ will have His rights, and the dreary scene through which we pass will (blessed be God) brighten up under the rays of the Sun of Righteousness, as a morning without clouds, as the clear shinning after rain.

As to our own portion, indeed, the appearing of Christ is the time of our being manifested in glory with Himself. But, doubtless, the loving His appearing looks to more than this. It is the substitution of the blessed reign of Christ for the power and dominion of Satan in a world which is God's, but now oppressed—the taking of His just place in the universe by Christ Himself. But the being caught up to meet the Lord in the air is for our own proper and higher blessing: it is in order to be forever with the Lord. There the apostles closes all he has to say to it. But in all that respects the government of God, the appearing or the manifestation of Jesus in this creation is the thing referred to. Hence our loving His appearing is a test whether we delight in His authority and the divine blessing, or whether we find our pleasure where Satan is prince. Hence also, when our responsibility is in question, as this relates to government and reward, the appearing is always referred to. Christ will take account with His servants, as well as with the world. But the difference is in every way evident. We all go up together: there is no distinction. The life and righteousness of an apostle are the same as mine. We shall all be conformed to the image of God's Son, that He may be the firstborn among many brethren. But the Thessalonians will be Paul's crown, not ours; and every man will receive his own reward, according to his own labor. Every man's work shall be made manifest; for the day shall declare it.

Other objections are founded on the declaration that Peter would die (John 21; 18:19:2 Peter 1:14-16;) Paul's expecting his own death, and predicting evils that should arise, and especially in the last days. One thing is clear about Peter's death—it can have no possible force now. But this remark has not all its force, if we do not perceive that it required a particular revelation that a person was to die: otherwise it was said, “we which are alive and remain,” and that by the apostle confuting this thought when it was in question; but of this anon. So the word “if I will that he tarry till I come” was interpreted. It required a particular revelation to point out a particular event as intervening, and when that has intervened, the general truth flows on in all its force; that is to say, the rightness of the general expectation is largely confirmed by a person's death before Christ's coming requiring a revelation to have it supposed possible. It was an event, too, which might have happened at any time after the Church's expectation had in fact been fully brought to light. The only word at all applicable to delay even then is, “when thou art old;” it is in comparison with, “when thou wast young,” —a proof he was no longer so—sufficiently vague to leave all open. But further, the Church, probably, was very little or not at all cognizant of it. When Peter was in prison (Acts 12), they thought his death might well happen then. When Peter refers to it, he does so as imminent. As to the expression “after my decease,” the expectation of the Lord's coming never enfeebled the most assiduous care of the Church, while waiting for Him, but just the contrary. Nor certainly can the case apply now. Again, what is more material to remark, it was never given AS a sign to the Church, but as a testimony to one individual. There is no proof that the Church had the least knowledge of it before it was past. It certainly was not addressed to the Church by the Holy Ghost before, for John's gospel was given after Peter's death—and this is the grand point.

As to the predictions of the last times, the case is even stronger; for the Holy Ghost has declared by John that they were come. That is, the expectation of Christ was constant then. The word of God gives us, in its own contents, the ground for constant expectation now, for it declares the last (hour or time) come before John was gone. At first, the expectation was constant; next, as time went on, and in fact faith and hope fuller, particular events were noticed as immediately imminent. Paul says (in Phil. 2) that he was a victim on whom aspersion had been made already—would that be a ground for delaying hope or awakening it? Peter announces that his decease was just at hand, John that the last time was already there; and these are alleged as reasons why we should not expect Christ! None of the cases was ever given to the Church in any sense as signs. Before the announcement was given to the Church by John that Christ had said it to Peter, Peter was long dead and gone. No: they were no signs, and have no application at all now; and what came on to be revealed as a necessity for the Church, for its seeing the evil of the last days, the Holy Ghost has taken care to tell us is arrived.

How wise are the ways of God! He establishes, as a doctrine, the expectation. Particular revelations are given to individuals, and they speak of them only when they are close at hand, God knowing well that there would be this delay. When the Church needs it, He warns them of evil and dangerous days, but takes care, before His instruction closes, to keep one there to tell us they were come. And this is alleged as a reason for our not waiting for the Lord! No: we must get down to another and an earthly hope before signs come in or are applicable to us. The virgins in the parable did sleep, and the saints have slept, but they went out to meet the bridegroom at the first, and awaited nothing else: when divinely aroused at midnight, they were to go forth to meet Him, and not to await aught else but Him The case of the Thessalonians is exceedingly strong. They so expected Christ to come in their life-time that they were uneasy if a saint died. Paul relieves them from this anxiety by telling them the dead in Christ would be raised. But does he correct their expectation as an unfounded one, saying, Signs must be fulfilled, all should die, and I know not what? Far from it. He shows the dead will have part, but strengthens their hope and associates himself with it, saying, “We which are alive and remain” Unbelief and Satan may seek to divert from this; the Holy Ghost sanctions and insists on it when the question is raised.

Such are but a few of the proofs the publication affords of the absence of spiritual intelligence inseparable from the system it maintains, as well as of the utter futility of its reasonings. Hence it was not thought worth while to answer it, save briefly. It professes to review the question, but is little more than a re-assertion of Mr. Newton's prophetic theory, as it seeks also to accredit his “Thought on the Apocalypse.” Now every reader ought to know that it is hard to say whether the absurdities or the blasphemies of that book are the most glaring, and that its system is inevitably identified with a false doctrine of as audacious dishonor against the Lord Christ as ever was known. Here are some of the proofs from the first edition, 1843—In p. 45, speaking of the elders, it is said, “their eldership and proximity to the throne of the Most High, are sufficiently plain indications of their being called into participation of His counsels.”

P. 48 et seq. “Nothing perhaps amongst all the attributes of God is more wonderful than this universality of present control, all the merely executive agents of His government being subordinate thereto it gives a view of Almighty and omnipresent power more wonderful perhaps than the original power of creation, or that whereby He continually upholds that which He hath created. This power is at present possessed and exercised by the Lord Jesus.... but His saints do not possess it yet But since it is said in scripture that we are the fullness of Him that filleth all in all it cannot be doubted that the Church will participate in this branch of His glorious power” —that is, have Almighty and omnipresent power.

P. 51. “But there is yet another character of power which the Church is to exercise in the glory. Admission into the counsels of God is represented by the throned elders—omniscient power of superintendence, by the seven spirits; but the execution of the will of God, and the omnipotent power necessary to such execution, is also committed to the redeemed. This is a third sphere of their glory. They are represented in it by the living creatures, or cherubim.”

Thus, the Church will be omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. Is not this open blasphemy? The last form of power, for which it refers to Ezekiel, is thus described— “nowhere absent but everywhere present, in the perfectness of undivided action; afford the mysterious but fitting symbol of the omnipotent agency of the power of Him, before whom all the inhabitants of the earth are reported as nothing” (p. 52). “And when we consider what the state of the earth will be when that period arrives we may see the necessity for such a power, and the high calling of the Church, in being entrusted with its application to the circumstances of a terrified but delivered earth” (pp. 53, 54). So in p. 55, still speaking of the Church as the cherubim, “as such will apply to the earth and to the universe the wisdom of the elders and the throne.” “And although all that we have yet seen in this chapter appears to exalt the creature almost into co-equality with God, yet we find His due supremacy most carefully maintained. The glorious power of the cherubim does not prevent their giving all glory, and honor, and thanks to Him that sat on the throne; nor does the higher exaltation of the elders prevent them from falling down before Him that sat on the throne, and worshipping,” &c.

But can the nauseousness of blasphemy be carried farther than, when, in ascribing omnipotence and omnipresence to the Church as executive power, it is declared that they apply the wisdom of the elders and the throne, setting the elders (i.e., the redeemed) before God Himself? It would be hard to find, in the wide circle of what printing has given to the world, such pages as 48-55 of Mr. N.'s Thoughts on the Apocalypse. For recklessness of assertion, for self-contradiction, for pseudo-criticism, we might produce a host of examples, if need were. And this is the book sought to be anew accredited by the publication under review. We enter no farther into its character here; but is it not painful to see a certain class of Christians greedily receiving this mass of unscriptural fancies and follies, which alas! have an object behind them, viz., the blotting out of Christ's various glory, and the denial of the true place of the Church as His body and bride? On the side of truth such a work would have not been borne an instant. It contradicts itself, parades bad Greek, details gross absurdities and bold statements without the smallest proof; but all this fades away before the real blasphemies which we have noticed as lying on the surface. One of the phenomena of the human mind is its disposition to receive error rather than truth. It likes error. And when imagination would be detected in a book pleading for truth, it is passed by in its most unbridled form and even liked when it is employed to teach error. It is a humbling fact. One only can deliver from its power.

The effort to re-accredit the “Thoughts on the Apocalypse,” which contains such blasphemies, and identified as it is with yet worse, cannot be too strongly and earnestly denounced. It is perhaps not wrong to add that the attempt has been made by one who has distinguished himself by another pamphlet, written to prove the resurrection of brutes and dedicated to a dead cat. There is no wish to do more than allude to such a fact; but many things help us in judging how far the guidance of God's Spirit is with a man.

Criticism on the Text of the New Testament: No. 1

As reference to the chief MSS. and editors of the Greek Testament may be frequent in this and other papers, it seems desirable to give a brief sketch for the sake of those readers who are not versed in such matters. The first printed Greek Testament was that contained in the Complutensian Polyglott. It was completed, it seems, about the beginning of the year 1514; but difficulties occurred to delay its publication till (after the death of its patron, and at least nominal editor, Cardinal Ximenes in 1517) Pope Leo X. formally sanctioned its issue in 1520. Previously to its publication the celebrated Erasmus brought out his first edition in 1516. There can be little doubt that the less costly volume of the Rotterdam scholar contained a text founded on fewer and inferior MSS. and drawn up with censurable haste, when one considers that the word of God was in question. Indeed, Erasmus himself was sensible of the imperfections of the work, though it was not till 1527 that he availed himself of the help afforded by the Complutensian Bible. The MSS examined by Erasmus remain for the most part at Bale, where his first edition was printed; those which were used by the Complutensian editors are supposed to be chiefly at Alcala and Madrid. The last edition of Erasmus bears the date, we believe, of 1535, and this, with extremely few changes, was what R. Stephens adhered to in his third edition (1550), though he also collated, to a certain extent, some MSS. in the Royal Library of Paris, dm. A little later Beza published some five editions, which follow Stephens' very closely. In 1624 appeared the first of the Elzevir editions, and in 1633 their second was published, which presumed to give the “Textus ab omnibus receptus,” as they styled it.

In England, Bishops Walton (London Polyglott, 1657) and Fell (twenty years later) made some considerable collations of various readings; but there they stopped. It was in 1707 that Dr. John Mill published his edition, which, like the Elzevir, professed to adopt the text of Stephens' third edition; but at the same time furnished about 30,000 various readings, with notes expressive of his judgment on the more important of them. Buster's reprint, three years afterward, furnished additions from a dozen new MSS.

The excellent J. A. Bengel took the first step in 1734 of editing the Greek Testament, or rather the Revelation, according to the best authorities then known. For it is remarkable that even J. J. Wetstein, in his celebrated edition of 1751-2, did not venture to depart from the “Textus Receptus,” but set the readings which he thought genuine immediately below the text. His two large volumes are not less remarkable for the mass of MSS., in general carefully collated, than for its copious Greek and Hebrew quotations in illustration of the sentiments, phrases, words, &c. In 1782-8, C. F. Matthaei published his Greek Testament in 12 vols., 8vo., with readings from more than thirty previously uncollated Moscow MSS. But two of these manuscripts contained all the New Testament, and almost all belonged to what is known as the Byzantine family. Nearly about the same time Alter published his text, chiefly from a Vienna MS., with a valuable comparison of some manuscript copies of the Coptic, Sclavonic, and Latin versions. Birch soon followed, first with an edition of the gospels in 1788, and afterward with a collection of various readings of the rest of the New Testament, collated with great care throughout the best libraries of Italy, Austria, Spain, and Denmark.

Even before Matthaei, Alter, and Birch, Griesbach's first edition had appeared (1775-7); but it is the second (1796-1806) which has given that editor so high a place among the critics of the New Testament. He has spared no pains, and neglected no document which was accessible to him. In acumen, too, he was nearly unrivaled.

Dr. M. A. Scholz was the next editor of importance. He published, in 1830-6, an edition which assumes that the common Constantinopolitan text, met with in the vast majority of more modern copies, is purer than that of the more ancient Alexandrine class to which Griesbach had given (ceteris paribus) a decided preference.

In 1831 appeared the first edition of C. Lachmann, a mere manual, without a statement of his principles or his authorities. But the omission has been repaired in his larger edition of 1842-1850. He professes to fill up the plan projected by the famous Dr. Bentley. But we are convinced that, in the two main characteristics of his system of recension, he is rather an antagonist than a disciple. The one is an utter rejection of internal evidence, on the plea that to introduce that element in judging of conflicting readings is rather to interpret than to edit. The other is a slavish and exclusive adhesion to witnesses (MSS., versions, and fathers) before the fifth century. Of course, it is not contended that the internal evidence should be abused to set aside the clear and consentient testimony of external vouchers; but surely it is a most important veto, in the rare instances where a manifest error has very ancient support, as it is an extremely effective casting-vote, where there may seem to be a pretty even balance of outward evidences. And so far was the learned and penetrating Master of Trinity from a mechanical copying of one or two old MSS., that he himself somewhere explicitly states the value of the more modern and even comparatively faulty copies in correcting the occasional slips of the most ancient and the best MSS, Prof. Tischendorf is the last great editor, whose labors need be noticed. His first edition appeared at Leipsic in 1841; the second, of Leipsic, in 1849, a marked advance on its predecessor, not more in accuracy and fullness of research, than in moderation. In his seventh edition, which is now in course of publication, he has the moral courage and candor to correct many of his immature innovations, and to restore a multitude of ordinarily received readings which his earlier criticism had rashly disturbed. If we can say little in commendation of his first issues at Leipsic and Paris, we may add with truth that his invaluable reprints of some of the best uncial MSS., his laborious and successful collations of the weightiest documents of various sorts and languages throughout the old world, and his generally accurate, prompt, and able application of all to the establishment of the Greek text in as pure a form as possible, and carrying its own proofs in the subjoined authorities, have laid Christian students under deep obligations to him. Indeed, he furnishes in his foot-notes the means, for those who are more jealous for God's word and more cautious in judgment than himself, to set aside the conclusions arrived at in his text.

But it is high time to leave others, and to say a few words upon the works before us. Mr. Green has proved himself, in former labors, to be learned and sensible, even where one is not convinced by his reasons. Of his “Developed Criticism,” we cannot speak in the same strong terms of praise as were due to his “Treatise on the Grammar of the New Testament.” The tendency appears to grow in him, as in others, to give an overwhelming preponderance to a very few hoary-headed witnesses. Let him remember that the most acute and experienced of the continental living critics is retracing many a hasty step taken in younger days. In this respect, there is a wholesome wariness in Mr. Scrivener's “Notes,” published some years back, though we think that he pushes his maintenance of the common text to excess. For it is well to bear in mind that to accredit received readings, if not scripture, is dangerous, no less than to reject those which really are scripture because of a deficiency in the known extant evidence. It cannot be doubted that there are in the common Greek text intrusions from the hand of man, which must be judged if we would enjoy as we ought the perfect word of God. For the value of that word is the measure of the value of a text as immaculate as can be procured and ascertained. Details we may take up another time, if the Lord will.

(To be continued.)

Criticism on the Text of the New Testament: No. 2

Our object, in the present paper, is to give such a sample as our narrow limits may permit, of some remarkable changes which it has been proposed to make in the common text of the Greek Testament. For though God, in His providence, has not failed to watch over His word, yet was it entrusted to the responsibility of man, who has broken down here, as everywhere else. Man has not known how to keep the holy deposit as became him. There were accidental slips of the copyists, as even yet there are, spite of extreme care, not a few errors of the press. Words, clauses, sentences might be, and often were, omitted by oversight. Interchanges of words that bore some resemblance occurred now and then. Then, again, it was not uncommon for marginal notes, originally meant as explanations, &e., to creep into the text through the ignorance or negligence of some after scribe. Finally, it can hardly be doubted that there are traces of intentional tampering with the copies, occasionally in the way of wholly unfounded additions; more frequently attempts at correcting terms and expressions, grammatical or other supposed errors; and, last of all, assimilations of scripture statements, as, for instance, in the corresponding parts of the four gospels. To these and other kindred causes are due the various readings of the ancient MSS. Numerous as they are, they are not out of proportion to the vast body of the copies.

But the task of correcting the Greek vulgate (i.e., of settling, in each particular case, what were the precise words of the Spirit) is one of no ordinary delicacy. And to us the matter for marvel (we must add, for deep thankfulness) has been the comparative purity, and, indeed, the substantial excellence, of that very “Textus Rec.” which it has been of late so much the fashion to despise. It is fully allowed that there are faults in it which not only older and better MSS., but a more careful examination of the then extant documents, might have corrected. Nevertheless, we gravely question whether the critical results of Lachmann, and Tischendorf in his early editions, are preferable on the whole. Sure we are that, in very many instances of serious moment, their latest products are not so trustworthy as yet. For, while the editions of the sixteenth century were formed on insufficient data and were slovenly as to details, the meddling criticism of our own age has made frequent and fearful inroads on the true text. The carelessness of the one and the self-complacent confidence of the other injures to an amount which, if it be not equal in number and weight, is at least highly discreditable to our era with all its boasted appliances.

This is strong language, but it is hardly so stern a condemnation, we submit, as strict righteousness would demand. The reader must be content with a few sheaves out of an abundant harvest. Every Christian is familiar with the parable of the two sons in Matt. 21:28-31, and with the striking picture their respective conduct afforded—the one who promised ill but afterward repented, of the despised people who turned from their sins to John the Baptist; and the other of the fair-spoken religious leaders who were willing for a season to rejoice in his light, but soon rejected him and the truth to which he witnessed. Nothing can be clearer than the language of our Lord and its drift. The first son was openly evil and refused his father's will, but afterward he repents himself and goes as he was commanded. The other answers well and nothing more. Can there be a doubt which of the two did the will of his father? It was “the first;” and such is the testimony of eleven old uncial MSS., the mass of the cursives, and some of the best ancient versions, eastern and western; yet, sad to say, Lachmann and Tischendorf, followed, we believe, by their English imitators, Alford and Tregelles, have boldly made the people give the absurd answer, “The last"! Now this is against the very evidence which themselves adduce. For the Vatican MS. (B) is the sole Greek witness of importance (if not, in fact, the only witness) which gives ὁ ἔσχατος (4 exhibiting δεύτερος, and 13, 69, ὁ ἔσχατος, supported by some versions and fathers). But then it is most unfair to base the proposed change upon this authority; because in the Vatican MS. and its reflectors, the answers of the two sons stand in inverted order; so that in effect the sense is the same as that of the common text. The Cambridge Codex Bezse (D) has the unenviable distinction among the uncials of reading ὁ αισχατος (= ὁ ἔσχατος) while it retains the usual order. Manifestly, then, these critics have slipped into the false position of rejecting the overwhelming majority of the best authorities, and of furnishing, as the real text of the evangelist, that which is the reading of not one uncial MS. in existence, for it is neither the order of Β nor the text of D; and this in spite of strong and unambiguous internal reasons which fix the right word, and in opposition to their own professed and almost mechanical attachment to the ancient external evidence! It is but fair to observe that Dr. Tischendorf has long abandoned this with many burlesques (as we must call them) on scripture—the more wretched because accompanied by a vast deal of ill-founded pretension to accuracy. But the lesson of the Leipsic Professor seems to have been lost on Mr. Green, who weaves an elaborate cobweb (pp. 23-26) round this plain question. He appears to lean towards ἔσχατος, a term stronger than ὕστερος, and he explains it, after a mode unprecedentedly farfetched, as = πρῶτος! He takes the second son's answer as the language of a sincerity (!) inconsiderate and fruitless; and in that case, the first son was in the rear of the other, for he had not advanced as far as well-meant profession!! He might as well argue that white=black. Happily, however, such a vagary as this was destined to the ephemeral existence it deserved, if it could be said to deserve existence at all. In a revised or new version of Matthew, which Mr. G. has published since his “Developed Criticism,” he has wisely returned to the king's highroad from the bye-path of a crotchety reading and a still more crotchety explanation.

But such uncertainty of sound, painful as it is, is less painful than the dishonor done to the entire closing section of St. Mark. Lachmann, usually presumptuous, did not dare even to bracket a concluding scene worthy of and inseparable from the gospel to which it belongs. Alas! Mr. Green is not afraid to sum up his judgment in these words— “Thus does the hypothesis of very early interpolation satisfy the body of facts in evidence” (p. 63). Nor is Mr. G. alone, Not to speak of foreigners, Mr. Alford and Dr. Tregelles will have it that the veritable Mark ends with ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ, the rest being authentic, but not Mark's. Now we agree with Mr. G.'s admission, that “it cannot he imagined that the evangelist formally brought his narrative to a close at the end of the eighth verse,” save only remarking that this is just what Mr. A. and Dr. Tregelles seem to have “imagined.” But what does Mr. G. “imagine?” As bad, we fear. Does Mr. G. conceive that the inspired conclusion of Mark is lost? or that the surviving sections were inspired and so preserved, and the close of the same evangelist not inspired and so lost? Does Mr. G. fancy that Mark never finished his brief gospel, but left a most important part to be added by another and unknown hand? To what a land of shadows and morass these gentlemen invite us, with the vain inducement of new light! Their inconsistency, too, is as egregious as their doctrine is deplorable. Thus Mr. Alford admits that the authority of Mark 16:9-20, is hardly to be doubted, and withal maintains that it is irreconcilable with the other gospels, as well as disconnected with what goes before. Singular marks, they would seem to us, of authentic scripture! But they are no difficulty to the Dean of C., who holds that the occurrence of demonstrable mistakes in the gospels (as in the Acts of the Apostles) “does not in any way affect the inspiration or the veracity of the evangelists.” Assuredly, that cannot be inspired of God wherein Mr. A. can point out demonstrable error.

But we must have done with this shameless Anglo-Germanism, and have only to add that the external evidence is decidedly in favor of this disputed passage. Is the omission of Β and of some copies of the Armenian and Arabic versions with a single Latin MS.—is the silence of the Eusebian and Ammonian sections, with the marks in L, &c, to overthrow the vast mass of positive testimony"? It seems probable that much of this, if not all, may be accounted for by the difficulty found in harmonizing the passage with others; and so the knot was cut, instead of leaving it as it was for the Lord to untie by more patient hands. As to the alleged internal difficulties, we have examined them with care, and believe that the characteristics of the passage confirm and require its reception.

Another notable piece of recent editorship appears in Luke 14:5. The common and true reading, ὄνος, (ass,) has good ancient support, but undoubtedly ὑιός has far more valuable extant MSS in its favor. It will hardly be credited by the uncritical reader that Scholz, Lachmann, Tischendorf, with an admiring herd, have renounced not only spirituality but even common sense, and have consecrated the obvious blunder of these early copies. They represent our Lord as saying, “Which of you shall have a son or an ox,” &c. But this, as Mr. G. remarks, quite destroys the reasoning a fortiori—nay, throws the stress on the wrong side of the argument. And why, then, does not Mr. G. deal summarily with such a monster of criticism?

As to the next passages which we refer to, Luke 22:43, 44, and 23:34, Mr. Green, we regret to say, seems to be more skeptical than Tischendorf, who prints them without hesitation. The Christian has only to refer to his Bible in order to feel what is endangered.

It will suffice to give two specimens from the fourth. gospel John 5:3, 4, is the first considerable passage which has been improperly disturbed; and here, as in Mark 16, it is remarkable that the incredulous Lachmann rises up to condemn Tischendorf and Mr. Green. These last omit from ἐκδεχομένων to νοσήματι, because of its absence, wholly or in part, in three or four first rate MSS. (pr.m.) some other authorities and suspicious circumstances confirming this. Now, to a simple mind, we think that the words of the impotent man, verse 7, decide the question in favor of the corrected A, C, and of D, E, F, G, H, K, (L in part) M, S, U, Δ, &c. They are grounded on the obnoxious statement relative to the troubling of the water, and are hardly intelligible without it. But when men get habituated to the textual manipulation of Germany, the most palpable gaps are turned into an evidence of genuineness, and the omitted words are viewed with the suspicion of being marginal glosses.

Still more blamable appears to us Mr. Green's dealing with John 8, following Lachmann, Tischendorf, Alford, and Tregelles. We frankly admit that the passage is wanting in a good many of the best MSS. It is contained, with some variations, in many uncials, and the mass of cursives; it has respectable testimony from versions of nearly every quarter, and from fathers. But it does seem extraordinary that Mr. G. should omit to give the weighty words of Augustine (De conj. Adult. ii.), not so much because they positively attest the presence of this portion in the copies of his time, but more because he gives the clear, simple, and satisfactory key to the shiftings of place, the fluctuations of shape, the stigma of distrust, and the non-recognition in Origen, Chrysostom, Tertullian, and many more, where a notice might have been looked for. Enmity to the true faith, according to Augustine, was the cause of its retrenchment. Some unwilling to go so far, would insert it with marks of doubt; others might hide it elsewhere, or more boldly leave a blank; which of itself intimates that its existence was known, but that for some reason it was omitted by those who little appreciated the glory of Christ, or the perfectness and the authority of His word. To say that “the genuineness of the passage cannot be maintained” is the conclusion of Mark G.! Some of these editors allow it to be true and inspired, but not John's: evidently a mere halfway towards discarding it altogether. It could be easily shown, were this the place, that the narrative bears the indelible marks of that disciple's style, and of the design which the Holy Ghost has imprinted on his gospel and on no other book.

With these unfavorable instances of Mr. G. we must close. They will serve to show, in some measure, why we think his “Developed Criticism” superficial and unworthy of unreserved confidence. Other opportunities may offer of referring to many places in the common text where he has succeeded. They are chiefly verbal corrections, and are nowhere perhaps, so numerous and happy as in the Acts of the Apostles (e. g. chap. 1:25; 3:20; 4:27; 6:8; 8:10, 27; 9:5, 6; 10:6; 11:20; 13:18; 15:17, 18, 33; 16:7; 18:5; 23:9; and 24:18, if not 6, 7, 8). In the Epistles, we think he is often rash and mistaken. Only four passages in the Apocalypse are discussed briefly but with judgment.

Notes of a Lecture on Daniel 2:19-49 and Daniel 7: Part 1

I have to read this chapter, dear friends, because it gives an outline of a part of prophecy of which other parts of Scriptures are the detail. We began with the Church's having a sure and certain hope, through the never changing promise of God, of being caught up to be forever with Christ before He comes to judge the world, and we saw that the looking and longing, where the heart is truly for Christ, for His coming again, is the bright and cheering influence of the Christian's path. Last evening we saw the professing church looked at as in the world, that which is called the Church, to be at last utterly rejected of God, fearfully judged for its corruption, or spewed out of Christ's mouth as nauseous.

When we turn to the ways of God on the earth, we have seen that His direct government had always been exercised with the Jews as a center. Providential government He always exercises. He makes all things work together for good to those that love Him. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without Him who is our Father. But when we come to direct government, the immediate dealings with men on the earth according to their conduct, and the direct public interference of God to show His ways on earth, then the Jews come on the scene, and are the pivot round which those ways turn. But they extend necessarily, when fully displayed, to the Gentiles who surround them, and fill the earth, the great body of whom have now long oppressed them. Hence the same passages which refer to the Jews refer to the Gentiles also, as those who come up before God when He begins that government in which the Jews have the first and principal place on earth. These passages I will now refer to, some of which, by reason of what I have just noticed, have already been quoted in reference to the Jews.

But before doing so I must point out two classes of Gentiles to which they refer, in respect of whom there are two very distinct classes of prophecy in Scripture: that which refers to those who were enemies of the Jews when God was there with them on the earth, when He owned them, or will hereafter again own them as His people; and that which refers to those who oppress them when they are not, when God has written on them Lo Ammi, “not-my-people,” and the times of the Gentiles have begun. These are entirely distinct. We get certain powers dealt with which are outside Israel, and are their enemies—when [the presence of God and His throne are still in the midst of that people, and the representatives of whom will be found in the latter days, when God has taken Israel up again. But after the Jews turned to idolatry, and, whatever had been God's patience rising up early and sending His prophets till there was no remedy, He was obliged to give them up to judgment. He then set up Nebuchadnezzar, and the times of the Gentiles began; and they are still running on. The empire passed from Babylon to Persia, and Persia to Greece; and the Jews were slaves to the Romans when Christ came, slaves to the Gentiles. Their ecclesiastical polity was allowed to exist, but the civil power was in the hands of their oppressors. These times of the Gentiles run on until Christ executes judgment, until those who were the oppressors of God's people, when He does not own them, shall be destroyed, and those who are their enemies outside these oppressors shall be brought to naught at a time when they think they have got it all their own way; and then the Jew is set free.

In a word, Scripture shows us that the Jews are the center of God's earthly dealings; and that as regards the Gentiles there are two classes of prophecy, one referring to the enemies of God's people when He owns them, and the other their oppressors when they are turned off and He does not own them. Deut. 32 lays the prophetic ground at the very origin of their whole history, of all that is to come to pass. In the 8th verse, as we have seen when speaking of the Jews, they are shown to be the center of His ways. “When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people (peoples) according to the number of the children of Israel.”

Just connect it now with the general judgment of the Gentiles. The prophet first states that after his decease Israel would corrupt themselves; then he goes on in verse 21 to the wickedness, the fruit of which is going on now. In the 25th verse he rises above the wickedness so as not to destroy them, to show that He is God. Then he goes on to the time of His rising up to judgment, leading us to that of which we are speaking. When Israel is brought utterly low He will indeed judge His people, but He will also repent Himself concerning His servants. His hand, as it is expressed, takes hold on judgment, rendering vengeance to His enemies, for such the Gentile powers are found to be, and apostate Jews too. He makes His arrows drunk with blood, and His sword devours flesh. Yet this it is brings in the millennial blessings, when the nations will rejoice with His people, for He will avenge the blood of His servants (a thing we have not yet accomplished)—will render vengeance to His adversaries, and, mark the expression, be merciful to His land and to His people. Thus we have His people judged, His servants avenged, His adversaries brought under vengeance, yet His land and people Israel coming into mercy, and the Gentiles rejoicing with them—in a word, judgment, the Lord's adversaries destroyed, Gentiles and apostate Jews, His servants avenged, Israel restored, and the nations blessed with them, but Israel His people.

I will now turn before distinguishing the enemies of Israel owned of God, and their oppressors when given up, to the general testimony of the judgment of the nations, and then show you the two distinct. Turn to the last chapter of Isaiah (66) verse 15, “For, behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire; for by fire and by his sword will the Lord plead with all flesh.” We have the great general fact of the judgment of the nations; and if you turn to verses 6 to 14, you will see the Jews set up again. “For thus saith the Lord (verse 12) Behold I will extend peace to her (Jerusalem) like a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream.” Then you get the ungodly Jews in verse 17th and thence to the 24th, the manifestation of Jehovah's glory, those that escape the judgment that accompanies it going off to the nations and announcing the appearing of that glory, and bringing back the scattered Jews to Jerusalem. I get, then, thus the great fact that the Lord comes to judge all flesh; and those He finds interfering with Israel He cuts off.

Now turn to Psa. 9 and 10. They celebrate the judgment and destruction of the enemies of Israel in the land. The Psalmist introduces the whole subject in the 4th and 5th verses, “For thou hast maintained my right and my cause; thou satest in the throne judging right, thou hast rebuked the heathen, thou hast destroyed the wicked, thou East put out their name forever and ever.... that I may show forth all thy praise in the gates in the daughter of Zion: I will rejoice in thy salvation. The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made: in the net which they hid is their own foot taken. The LORD is known by the judgment which he executeth: the wicked is snared in the work of his own hands. The wicked shall be turned into hell and all the nations that forget God,” verses 14-16; Psa. 10:16. “The LORD is king forever and ever: the heathen are perished out of his land.” These are the two Psalms which, after speaking of the rejection of Christ as king in Zion, and His taking the character of universal headship as Son of man in Psa. 8, bring in the whole testimony of the Psalms, the state and feelings of the remnant of Israel in the last days, and the judgment which God executes upon the Gentiles.

Hence, remark, it is that we find in the Psalms these appeals to judgment and demands for it, which have often stumbled Christians, when urged by the enemies of Christianity. They are not, the expression of Christian feelings. We leave the world and go to heaven. In no sense have we to demand the destruction of our enemies in order to pass into glory. But Israel cannot have their rest on earth until the wicked are destroyed; and therefore they do demand this righteous judgment, and that is the way they will be delivered.

To pursue our subject; turn to Jer. 25. This is a remarkable chapter; but first Twill give you a few verses from the end of Isa. 24:16, but to show the connection with Israel I will read from verse 13th “And thus it shall be in the midst of the land among the people, there shall be as the shaking of an olive tree, and as the gleaning grapes when the vintage is done, they shall lift up their voice, they shall sing for the majesty of the LORD, they shall cry aloud from the sea. Wherefore glorify ye the LORD in the fires, even the name of the LORD God of Israel in the isles of the sea. From the uttermost parts of the earth have we heard songs, even glory to the righteous. But I said, my leanness, my leanness, woe unto me! the treacherous dealers have dealt treacherously, yea, the treacherous dealers have dealt very treacherously. Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth. And it shall come to pass, that he who fleeth from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit; and he that cometh up out of the midst of the pit shall be taken in the snare: for the windows from on high are open and the foundations of the earth do shake. The earth is utterly broken down, the earth is clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly.” There you get the world reeling like a drunkard, under the terrible judgment of God, and (verses 21, 22) we see the judgment of the powers of evil on high, the prince of the power of the air and his angels, and of the kings of the earth on the earth; and then the LORD reigning in Zion and before His ancients gloriously.

Now turn to Jer. 25:15, “For thus saith the LORD God of Israel unto me: Take the wine-cup of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send thee, to drink it.” He speaks of the various nations in that way, and then goes on from verses 29 to 33 to declare the universal judgment of the heathen, describing the terrible coming down of Jehovah in judgment upon them.

Turn now to Mic. 5 “And I will execute judgment in anger and fury upon the heathen, such as they have not heard.” But then, too, Israel is blessed and re-established in power in verses 7, 8, and that through Christ, great to the end of the earth (verse 4, 5.) “And he shall stand and feed in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God: and they shall abide: for now shall he be great unto the ends of the earth And this man shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall come into our land: and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise against him seven shepherds and eight principal men.”

Turn to Joel 3:9 to 17. “Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles; prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near, let then come up. Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning. hooks into spears: let the weak say I am strong. Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord; let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: (Jehoshaphat means judgment of Jehovah) for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about. Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe; come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining. The Lord also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake; but the Lord shall be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel. So shall ye know that I am the Lord your God, dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain: then shall Jerusalem be holy, and there shall no strangers pass through her any more.”

What makes this passage additionally important is, that Jerusalem is brought back to blessing and never to be trodden down again, no strangers shall pass through her any more, but the Gentiles who helped on her affliction are destroyed forever. In the time of Nebuchadnezzar, when Jerusalem was in trouble, and again when Titus besieged and took it, the Gentiles were not destroyed at all. When Cyrus sent back a remnant to Jerusalem, they remained captive, and strangers are yet in Jerusalem. Again we find here all the nations gathered together, the Gentiles destroyed and the Jews set up.

Zeph. 3:3 to end: Jehovah's determination is to gather all the nations. They are to be devoured by the fire of His jealousy. Here again, too, we find that Israel will never be cast out again. He will bring back their captivity and make them the praise among all the people. He will cast out their enemy. They will not see evil any more. Jehovah is in the midst of Jerusalem, God will rest in His love. I will turn to one more passage before I show the difference between the two classes of enemies to Israel.

Hag. 2:5 to 9, “According to the word that I covenanted with you when ye came out of Egypt, so my spirit remaineth among you: fear ye not. For thus saith the Lord of hosts: yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land, and I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the Lord of hosts. The glory of this latter house [properly, the latter glory of this house] shall be greater than of the former, saith the Lord of hosts: and in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts.” The apostle quotes this passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews, showing that it has not yet come. “See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven.” He is urging them not to rest on earthly and created things, showing that that time of universal shaking of the first and changeable creation was yet to come, declaring that all would be shaken and pass away.

Let us now take a review of Scripture as to the two classes of Israel's enemies of which I have spoken.

The chief enemy of Israel, while Israel was still owned of God before the captivity of Babylon, was the Assyrian. There had been others, as Syria, but Syria succumbed to the Assyrian. Egypt then sought to fill the scene of the world and came up, conquered Judea, and met the power of Babylon at Carchemish; but its power was broken, and Nebuchadnezzar became the head of gold over the whole earth, and the times of the Gentiles began, which are still running on, and will, till the Lord takes His great power and reigns. No doubt the Jews came back, or a small remnant of them, from Babylon, to present Messiah to them. But they were so wicked and perversely idolatrous that God had given them up to captivity, and, even when in their land on their return, they were subject to the Gentiles. God's glory and His throne were no longer amongst them. When they came back, they never got the Shekinah; the Shekinah was the cloud that manifested the presence of God. They had no longer the ark, or the Urim and Thummim What constituted the witness of God's presence was gone, and these things were never restored. These are the times of the Gentiles still; the four beasts constituted the times of the Gentiles. And this, as to the earth, was of the last possible importance. The throne of God ceased to be on the earth.

Prophecy, indeed, remained till the outward order was restored; but it is remarkable that the post-captivity prophets never set aside the judgment pronounced in Hosea— “Ye are not my people.” They never call the Jews God's people in their then standing, doing so only when they prophesy of that future day when they will be restored to the divine favor which is yet to come.

Finally, when Christ came, He was rejected, and sat down on His Father's throne, and the divine power and glory is wholly above, the object of faith to the believing soul. The people whom God had called, and who had God's throne among them, were wholly cut off, though preserved.

Well, the throne of God had ceased on the earth at the beginning of these times of the Gentiles; and therefore, in Daniel you never get the God of the earth, but the God of heaven, because He was not there with them. The departure of God from the direct government of the earth with Israel for the center, His throne being in their midst, sitting between the cherubim, as it is said, and His return to the government of the earth, are of immense importance.

In Ezekiel we see His judgment on Jerusalem. God comes (Nebuchadnezzar being the instrument), God comes on the cherubim in the way of providence (those wheels which were so high they were dreadful), spares His own whom He has marked, and gives up the rest to destruction. He executes judgment, leaves them, and goes into heaven. The Gentiles are left to rule, subject to God's providence and final judgment; Israel, and God's throne in their midst, is set aside.

Four great empires arise successively—Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. The Roman Empire, while devastating everywhere, does not succeed in getting all nations under its power, but continues the great power of the world till the judgment, though in a special form.

Then the Assyrian comes on the scene again at the close; that is, geographically what is now Turkey in Asia and part of Persia, but in the last days Assyria will appear on the scene in the Russian power, according to the testimony of Ezek. 37; 38 (a passage applied to this power one hundred and fifty years ago by the elder Lowth before the present question arose). And the world, as connected with Israel and God's ultimate purposes on the earth, is divided into Western Europe, and the basin of the Mediterranean; the Roman Empire, and Eastern Europe or the Russian. These two are never confounded in Scripture. The Assyrian was the power that warred against Israel when God owned them, and the other the power that oppressed and held them captive when they were not owned.

Now in Isaiah and the pre-captivity prophets you get the Assyrian all through, the beast being scarcely mentioned (once “the King,” so as to complete the scene; and even that, I apprehend, is a subordinate ally of the beast). Whereas in Daniel you do not get the Assyrian, unless, possibly, obscurely in one chapter, and then not as such, the same thing being true of Zechariah, save that all nations are mentioned in both in a general way, as brought as sheaves to the floor when rising up against Jerusalem. Thus far I have been speaking of the general judgment; now, having distinguished between the beasts and the Assyrian power of the latter day, we have to cite those which apply to them distinctively.

Turn to Daniel, you get fully the beasts, but not the Assyrian. Let us examine first the chapter I read. Here we have Nebuchadnezzar the head of gold, the Persian Empire denoted by silver, the Grecian by brass, the Roman by iron, while the iron and clay represent the present state of things. Then after these last were formed, a stone is cut out without hands (God's sovereign work), smites the image all becomes as the chaff of the summer threshing floor, and no place is found for them; and then the stone which smote the image became a great mountain which filled the whole earth.

There is not here, remark, a trace of influence exercised over the previous component parts of the image so as to produce a change of character. The notion is that Christianity will spread and pervade these countries. Now the stone does not grow at all till they are entirely destroyed. There is no influence exercised, no modification takes place, no change at all is spoken of here. The little stone destroys all before it increases. It is the stone which has smitten the image which grows.

What we have got here is the coming of Christ's kingdom in judgment, and a total destruction of the empires which preceded its action. That action was on the last, and more particularly on the toes of iron and clay, the last form which this image took, looked at in its geographical distribution on earth, and the condition of its parts, partly strong, partly broken. What gives its specific character to the figure is, that the stone does not grow at all until it has clone all these things, and after it has finished its work of judgment and destruction, grows to be a great mountain.

What is going on now is not this. Christ has ascended up on high and He waits, in the spirit of grace, sitting on the right-hand of His Father's throne, while the saints, His co-heirs, the church is gathering out of the world; until at the moment known to God alone, He rises up from the Father's throne, then to take to Him His great power and reign, His enemies being now put under His feet.

Turn now to the interpretation itself, which is perfectly clear on this point. Power in the world is entrusted to man in the person of Nebuchadnezzar; three empires succeed his, and at the end, though there be a strength in the last which breaks in pieces and subdues all around it, yet a conflict of principles characterizes its latter form (I have little doubt the Teutonic and Latin elements); and it is partly strong and partly broken. But then the close comes, verse 44: “And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms and it shall stand forever.”

You will remember, beloved friends, that on the last evening we saw the general outline of God's dealings with the Gentiles, in connection with His chosen earthly people, the Jews: (the Jews being the center of all God's earthly dealings) First, that at the restoration of the Jews there would be the judgment of the Gentiles, the nations being divided into two classes, those that were enemies to God's people when God owned them and had His throne in their midst; and those who led them captive and oppressed them when God did not own them. Both will be cast out from the seat of power. It is evident that, as regards the world, it is an all important fact, God's taking His throne from it. When that took place, He was no longer the God of the earth, though He over-rules all things providentially, but does not exercise direct government as in Israel when His throne was there. Hence Daniel calls Him the God of heaven, and it is not until He comes to judge the world that He takes his name of God of the earth, Lord of the whole earth (see Zech. 14). The time during which God gives up His throne on the earth is called “the times of the Gentiles.” During these times the Jews who were taken captive and made slaves to Nebuchadnezzar have ceased to be God's people as a present position, and are always subject to the Gentiles, and the times of the Gentiles run on till He comes to take vengeance. Then He takes them up again, casting out, as we saw before, those who oppressed them when they were not owned, and those who were enemies when they were owned and His throne was in their midst.

The distinctions of these two classes is important to us because we are in the times of the Gentiles. In the prophecies there is never the slightest confusion between the two. The Assyrian, and finally Gog, is the great enemy of Israel when the people is owned, the four beasts or Gentile empires their oppressors when they are not. The prophets up to the captivity and Ezekiel speak of the former, Daniel and Zechariah of the latter, to which (when we come to the New Testament) we must add Revelation. The whole New Testament history is under the last beast.

The first, fullest, and most general account of these is in chapter 7 of Daniel, which we have read. If we turn to it now for a moment, we shall see that it is divided into portions by the term: I saw in the night visions. First we have, verses 1-6, the fact of the four great empires and a brief account of three. The next division, beginning with verse 7th to the 12Th, a particular description of the fourth beast, and then a throne set up and judgment. Verse 13 begins another division in which the kingdom is given to the Son of man After this we have the explanation given to Daniel by the angel, in which the condition of the saints under the beasts and particularly the last beast, and, finally, under the Son of man, is given. They are beasts as having lost their intelligence towards God, not owning Him, and doing their own will in ravening power as far as they can. Of this the madness of Nebuchadnezzar was a figure.

The three first great empires are Babylon (the head of gold); the bear, Persia (silver); the leopard, Grecian (brass). On these I do not dwell they are past. The fourth beast, described as we have seen apart more particularly, is the Roman; you find him represented as fierce and powerful, tearing and devouring—not simple conquest, but putting all down under it, treading down what it did not devour; and where has not Western Europe sought to place its power? But which is far more important still, we find direct antagonism to God.

Verses 7-8, “After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth; it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns. I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots, and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things.” You will remark that there is a special power here (a horn, the symbol of power or a kingdom); before it three of the kingdoms fall. Its general character is given here. We shall see the details farther on. It has eyes of man: eyes here mean intelligence, insight into things. His mouth speaks great things, saying, Who is Lord over us? Nor is this all—that his lips are his own, as the psalm speaks; but he will not allow of God.

Notes of a Lecture on Daniel 2:19-49 and Daniel 7: Part 2

“I beheld till the thrones were cast down, [here with the LXX and best judges we must read, “set,” which falls in with the sense indeed of the whole passaged and the ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him; the judgment was set, and the books were opened. I beheld then because of the voice of the great words which the horn spake: I beheld even till the beast was slain, and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame” The three first powers, you may remark, had their dominion taken away (their power was destroyed); but subsisted afterward as subject kingdoms, whereas, when the Roman Empire is put an end to, it is destroyed utterly.

To this we must now turn. It has an importance which none of the others have, though Babylon has a special character. It was the Roman Empire that was in power when Christ was born and took part in His rejection through Pilate, and hereafter they will join Antichrist when he comes. The prophet regards till the thrones are set and the ancient of days sits. The Roman Empire will then subsist and, whatever its form or its apparent subversion, is not supplanted by any other beast till the judgment comes. The prophet beholds till the thrones are set and the Ancient of days sits. This is an important element in the fourth beast's history; the consequence is, that it is utterly destroyed when it ceases to be an Empire Remark, too, the clear proof we have of what I drew your attention to as so important in speaking of chap. 2, namely-that the kingdom is not assumed by the Son of Man till the judgment is executed. He may and will destroy the beast by His power; but it is only when it is destroyed, His own kingdom is established. It cannot be along with evil. This is the question of the expectant and suffering Jew in Psa. 94:22. It is not now but after the judgment that the growth of, Christ's kingdom takes place. He is sitting at the right hand of God, but comes thence to take the kingdom with glory and power; He is gathering in now the joint-heirs.

Next, we find here that what is brought out as the cause of this judgment is the great words of blasphemy of the little horn. There cannot be a more definite statement that the glory and kingdom of Christ is consequent on the judgment. I insist upon this, because it bears upon everything we are treating of, and determines our whole view of the nature of Christ's kingdom. There is no change in the principle of sin, in the first Adam, but it goes on to the end. It was lawless at the beginning, breaking law when law was given, rose up against the Lord in hatred to God when He was made flesh and dwelt among us; and Satan having, throughout corrupted the church as we have seen, his power is allowed to unfold itself in the beasts, and in the last beast ripens to a head, and leads the kings of this earth to make war with the Lamb (the lawless one, the man of sin, being then openly revealed). Our portion, as we have seen, is in the Lord, nor will the fruitful power of His grace towards us cease till we shall be like Himself.

But though the kings of the earth stand up together, and the rulers take counsel together, yet God will set His King upon His holy hill of Zion. Here, however, the aspect of His power is somewhat different, He is seen as Son of Man, a term of wider dominion than Son of David, in which Psa. 2 views Him, but even there the heathen are given to Him for an inheritance, and He breaks them in pieces like a potter's vessel. The difference is this that here the kingdom is given and possessed as a dominion, in Psalm established by judicial power.

We now come to the interpretation in which this very judgment is spoken of, some immensely important truths besides being brought out. In the prophecy nothing had been said of the saints, heavenly or earthly: here we shall find both—I do not say the church, but still heavenly saints. Indeed, when God's mind is thus given, and not merely the outward facts, the connection pf these events with the saints is the principal point. (17th verse,) “These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth. But the saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom forever, even forever and ever.” The saints will do it, not the Son of Man only. (21St verse), “I beheld, and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them; until the Ancient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the Most High; and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom.”

Here you will first remark the extremely important point that the Ancient of days Himself comes. For though Christ, as man, is gone to receive a kingdom and to return; yet the Son of Man is the Ancient of days. So it is said in Timothy that the King of kings and the Lord of lords would show Christ in glory. But in the Revelation Christ comes as King of kings and Lord of lords; and I may add, in another relationship, the traits of the Ancient of days in Daniel are found in the Son of Man who walks in the midst of the golden candlesticks. He is there distinctly both—Son over His own house who built all things.

Another term calls for remark here—the saints of the Most High; or, as in the margin, heavenly places, which we find again in Ephesians as the place of the saints; yet it is immediately connected with the name God takes as possessor of heaven and earth. It is not here the Church but all the saints who have their dwelling in heavenly places in connection with the kingdom, yet in a state of eternal glory. God took the name of God Almighty in relationship with Abraham, of Jehovah with Israel, of Father, in grace, with us. Thus Abraham was to be perfect, walking before God Almighty, Israel was to be perfect with Jehovah their God. We are called to be perfect as our Father which is in heaven is perfect. We are before God as Christ; but, as He is in us, we are called to display the divine nature; to be imitators of God as dear children and walk in love as Christ loved us. But the name of Most High is the expression of God's sovereign dominion, above all that is called God, the Supreme. So, when Abraham returned from the slaughter of the kings, figure of Israel's deliverance and final victory in the latter day, Melchisedec, the figure of Christ as King and Priest, Priest upon His throne in the world to come, King of righteousness, King of peace, comes forward and blesses Abraham on the part of the Most High God possessor of heaven and earth and blesses the Most High in Abraham's name. In our chapter the saints have their name in connection with this, and indeed it is applied to God (with the difference then of being singular, instead of plural).

Meanwhile tribulation and trial is the portion of those on earth. The little blasphemous horn who speaks such great things makes war with the saints This is the general character. Of course they must be down here. Those on high he can only blaspheme. I do not believe this little horn to be Anti-Christ; the source of persecution is ever the traditional religious power. Antichrist will be in direct association with him and urges him to it of this hereafter. But this is the last active power of evil in the Roman Empire or beast whose names of blasphemy are on it: of this also further. This persecution will continue till God's power interferes. This is stated in a very important verse: he prevailed till the Ancient of days came (here we see that the Son of Man is the Ancient of days, for we know that the Son of Man comes); and thus a total change takes place, judgment is given to the saints of the high places, and the time is come that the saints possess the kingdom. He does not say saints of the Most High here, for on earth and in blessing the earthly saints will possess the kingdom as in Matt. 25; but judgment is given only to the saints of the Most High. The Ancient of days then comes, judgment is given to the heavenly saints (compare Rev. 20:4, where we read judgment was given unto them, and they live and reign with Christ 1000 years), and the saints possess the kingdom.

When will Christians learn their place? He is never called our King, but He is the King of the nations, of the world. We reign with Him—Nothing is so hard as to get the saints to accept the place they have in Christ—to know that in Him, through the price of His own most precious blood, they are one with Him in God's sight and purpose now, and (after having been caught up to Him in the clouds, as we have already seen in a previous lecture) will come with Him when He comes to judge the nations.

But I pursue the explanation. Verse 24— “And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise, and another shall arise after them; and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings, and he shall speak great words against the Most High, and think to change tithes and laws; and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.” Most High, the first time it is mentioned here, is God himself. “Times and laws” refer to Jews entirely, the words are terms which refer to their statutes and ordinances These (not the saints) are given into his hands: God never gives His saints into their enemies' hands, though He may use these as a rod.

When that time comes, the beast at first makes his covenant with Israel according to Dan. 9:27—first joins with them, then breaks with them, and makes the sacrifice and oblation to cease. All the Jewish order which had been set up in pride will he completely upset, as in Isa. 18— “They shall be left together unto the fowls shall summer upon them, and all the beasts of the earth shall winter upon them.” They are brought into such trouble as never was since there was a nation, no, nor over will be. It is the time, times and half a time—the great tribulation. The verse gives in few words, but precisely, the state of things when the little horn is wearing out the saints of God. Satan will be cast out of heaven and have come down, as we have seen, in great rage, having but a short time.

Before that period everything is given into the power of the beast. Then the Lord, the Ancient of days who is come, takes all into His hands. “A short work will the Lord make upon the earth.” For the judgment shall sit; the kingdom shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High—that is, to the Jewish people, now brought into connection with the rule of heaven, and secured by it.

In order to get that clear a little, we turn to the Revelation, for there we find the history of this beast unfolded in chapter 13. I shall refer to it fully farther here, only to notice its character and what it is. It is the Roman beast with seven heads and ten horns. It receives its power from the dragon, blasphemes God and those in heaven, and makes war with the saints. It is ministered to spiritually by the deceitful power of Satan. It is the instrument of Satan's power in the earth, when he is cast out of heaven. Already, as the dragon, the Romans had joined in rejecting Christ. The Roman beast is the only one which has done it in the person of Pilate. But then Christ owned the power as of God, as it was. He said “Thou hadst had no power, if it had not been given thee from above,” though Satan's influence, as prince of this world, was guiding the use of that power. Then judgment was on one side, perfect righteousness on the other. When Christ comes again, judgment will return to righteousness. They will be reconciled in one, as it is in Psa. 94— “The Lord will not cast off His people, neither will He forsake His inheritance. But judgment shall return unto righteousness, and all the upright in heart shall follow it.” Till then the saints must not expect it. God may hold the reins and control to His own purposes the powers that be whom He hath ordained—may give thus all quietness, as we surely experience it and have to thank Him for; but we must not expect the motives of government to be righteousness as God sees it. It is the time to do well, suffer for it, and take it patiently as Jesus did; and when God looses the reins to evil, when Satan is come to the earth, then the full true character of evil power from Satan will be manifested. “The dragon gave him his throne, and power, and much authority.” Such is the Roman beast in its final state during the time, times and half a time.

The distinct and definite place and character of this period becomes as plain as possible if we consult the end of Dan. 9 The prophet receives from the heavenly messenger the assurance that the Jews will be restored. “Know, therefore, and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks: the streets shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times; and after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off and shall have nothing,” as in margin, “not 'for himself',” is not the sense. “And he shall confirm covenant with the many for one week, and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease.” -First, seven weeks during which time Jerusalem is rebuilt, then sixty-two weeks—making sixty-nine weeks; Messiah was cut off; but there was a week or part of one left. After the dose of the sixty-ninth week Messiah was cut off, and He took nothing. Thereupon the Jewish nation, instead of being restored, was completely subverted. So we find in Luke, “And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations; and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled”

The last week thus remains. In the first half indeed Messiah was there, but rejected by the nation and owned only by the remnant. At the end Antichrist is owned by the nation, rejected by the remnant. The beast makes a covenant with the Jews for that week, but breaks it in the midst of the week, the half week remains unaccomplished. You get then three and a half years that remain to be accomplished, when abominations (i.e., idolatry) will overspread the Jewish people, the times and laws will be changed at that very time Satan is come down (in chapter 12 of Revelation), and the woman, the true remnant in Jerusalem, flees into the wilderness for a time, times, and half a time. This is Daniel's half week. You get it thus perfectly clear. The remnant owned Christ, but the Jews did not. You get the sixty-nine weeks, and then a long parenthesis in which Christ is set aside and the Jews on the earth, “desolations being determined,” which goes on until the time of the Gentiles is fulfilled During this period the church, the heavenly thing, is called.

Thus the time we are in is not reckoned at all. So the prophets (who do not speak of the times of the Gentiles as Daniel does) pass it over altogether and connect Christ's second coming to earth with His first. We have a very remarkable proof of this from the Lord Himself, when quoting from Isa. 61— “The Spirit of the LORD GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.” The prophet adds— “and the day of vengeance of our God.” This Christ does not read, though in the same sentence, but stops short in the midst of a sentence, when He had read as far as— “to preach the acceptable year of the LORD” —and then ceased. “He closed the book, and sat down;” because the remaining part of the prophecy extended beyond the period in which they then were, and in which we still are, to a time which is yet to come—the time of vengeance of the Lord.

All this time the interval in the midst of Daniel's week runs on without being counted. We do not count by time in heaven, and this is the time of the heavenly calling. This is evident from the passage in Dan. 9, for the weeks go on to sixty-nine; then all is vague to the one week at the end; but as soon as ever God takes the Jews up again, Daniel's week begins again. If you apply therefore the time, times, and half a time, or the forty-two months, or the twelve hundred and sixty days (which are precisely the same time, three hundred and sixty days being counted to a year, and the five intercalary days or epigomena being left out) to the intervening epoch, you are necessarily on false ground. I believe there is an analogy, as there are many Antichrists though they are not the Antichrist, proving in a moral sense we have been in the last days since the Apostle's time. But the moment you come to be precise, it all falls to the ground, although there is an analogy. The counting of time belongs entirely to the Jews, and the three years and a half begin to run when they are again on the scene, when Satan has been cast down, and the beast has assumed a diabolical character—is come up out of the abyss.

If you take chap. 13 of Revelation, you get the details of this beast—Verse 2— “And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.” There I get the direct authority of Satan. The saints of the Most High did not take the kingdom then: we shall be caught up and be entirely out of the way of that power of evil. Verse 3, “And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed; and all the world wondered after the beast.” I do not doubt that we get here the Imperial head once destroyed but now revived—Verse 4— “And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast, saying: Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?” That is, the direct power of Satan, as dominant, is publicly owned, and the Roman Imperial beast thus restored carries all the world enthusiastically after it. In verses 5-6, “And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months. And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwelt in heaven.” Mark here, he cannot touch them in heaven, but he blasphemes them. Satan had been cast out, he was no longer an accuser and those above he can only blaspheme. There will be some who will have a place in heaven and whose hearts are weaned from earth whom he will injure. Those whom he can hurt and kill will be taken up, or they would have lost earthly blessings by their faithfulness, and not get heavenly ones. Such there will be, who refuse to worship him But this is a detail into which I do not enter here, as our subject is the Gentile powers and their judgment. But “all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb that was slain.” Verse 8—for such I have no doubt is the true force of the passage. Complete power (only God preserves a remnant) is in the hands of Satan and his instruments.

But, connected with this, we have now another power coming out of the earth. “And I beheld another beast coming out of the earth: and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.” In this, I have no doubt, we have the Antichrist, or false Messiah, the direct exercise of Satan's falsehood on earth. He is not a priest, or anti-priest, here: that he exercised in heaven. He is a false prophet (compare 19:20), and he has two horns like a lamb. Horns are the power of a kingdom; and he sets up to have that like the Lamb. He pretends to the power of Messiah's kingdom and to be the hoped for king; but when his voice was heard, it was evidently Satan's. Antichrist denies the Father and the Son (i.e. Christianity); he openly denies its truths, and he openly denies that Jesus is the Christ, the first, so to speak, the Jewish form of Christianity, though ever of course true, but what a Jew was and will be called on to own. Verses 12 and 13, “And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed, and he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men.”

How solemn this, as the power of delusion, remark. It was the proof Elijah gave that Jehovah was the true God, not Baal. Here this active power of Satan is showing by the same sign that his witness is to be received, and that they are to own the beast and worship him, and they are so given up that they do believe the lie. We have seen elsewhere that he did falsely what Christ did to prove His mission. He leads them thus further to open denial of Christ, denies Christianity altogether, and says he is Christ himself; but, at the same time, leads them by these means into idolatry, and to make an image to the restored beast (14, 15, 16), “and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live, and he had power to give (not life, none can do that but God, but) breath unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause that as many as would not worship the beast should be killed. And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark on their right hand or in their foreheads:” that is, he forces them to be his avowed slaves, and make an open profession of his service.

In sum, we have a second beast using diabolical spiritual energy, and playing into the hands of the beast who held his throne from Satan. You get a kind of trinity of evil, and resurrection. The dragon gives the throne to the beast, as the Father to Christ, and the second beast exercises in spiritual energy the power of the first beast in his presence, as the Holy Ghost with Christ. This is the fruit of the falling away, the apostasy of Christianity. So the first beast was slain and his deadly wound is healed.

In chapter 17 we have other aspects of the beast, or Gentile power. The empire is given, but it will ascend out of the bottomless pit, become definitely diabolical and go into perdition. Ver. 9, 10, 11, “And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sitteth, and there are seven kings, forms of power, five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come, and when he cometh he must continue a short space And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.” That is, five forms of government were fallen in the apostle's time; and one was the imperial; a sixth was to come and abide a short time; and the last, who is of the seven, as a form I suppose imperial, but is an eighth. In this last form he comes out of the bottomless pit—as a diabolical character. It will be a Roman Emperor: he is the eighth head, and is the beast (that is, concentrates all the power in his own person). After him the world, save only the elect, will go, seeing the long-lost form of power revived in his eighth head. It is Rome; for the seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sits: of her anon. But another important element is added (Ver. 12), “And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast.”

“One hour with the beast” —mark that, because it is the definite evidence that it had not been going on since the fall of the Roman Empire through the inroad of the Northern nations. Those nations broke up, and, for the time, destroyed the beast—gave it its deadly wound. These receive power one hour with the beast: therefore the beast must come up again. It existed at the first without these kings Then these kings existed without it, and you have the ten kings without the beast. At the end you get the ten kings with the beast. Men form schemes; but the moment I get Scripture, I can surely say we have not the beast in this form yet. What is presented here is subsisting kingdoms, but kingdoms which have given their power, without ceasing to be kingdoms, to one head, who leads all as a whole. These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is the Lord of lords, and King of kings and they that are with Him are called, and chosen, and faithful. This beast, with his subordinate kingdoms, rises up in open hostility against the authority of Christ; while Christ comes with His armies to judge and destroy them all. God's mighty ones come down, the saints come with Christ, 15th and 16th verses, “And he said unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.”

This introduces us to the judgment of Babylon, of Rome, of the great whore, the mother of harlots and abominations. We see, not a spiritual change, but her utter destruction by the beast and the ten kings, the ruin of priest craft. They pull it all to pieces and devour its wealth and destroy it utterly, wearied with its dominion and falseness. It had deserved it. But it is not the power of good. “For God hath put in their hearts to fulfill his will, and to agree, and to give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled.” It is a perfect riddle how people who profess to receive the Scripture have invented all sorts of notions as to the course of events connected with Christianity in this world. The moment I come to Scripture, they are all gone. Men may talk as they like about the steady growth of religion in the world, and the way in which God's word will remove the power of evil from it. It is directly stated that, when the beast and the horns destroy the corrupt power which had long ruled them and made the nations drunk with her fornication, they give their kingdom to the beast.

You will find at the end of chap. 19 God's dealings with the beast (14th to 20th verses), “And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress and wrath of Almighty God. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written KING OF KINGS AND LORD or LORDS. And I saw an angel standing in the sun: and he cried with a loud voice, saying to the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God; that ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of men mighty, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great. And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army. And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.” — And the false prophet which is the second beast—21St verse— “And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth, and all the fowls were filled with their flesh” —a strong figure drawn from Ezekiel of judgment and destruction. There we see that power has come, not the influence of the word, whether law or gospel; but power has come in which puts down evil power.

In chap. 20 we have a full development of what we read in Dan. 7. We get in the Revelation the history of the last beast more fully developed (that is, of the Roman Empire which had already rejected Christ when on earth in conjunction with the Jews). Consequent on the exaltation of Christ to the right hand of God, the Jews being set aside as a nation, the church was formed. She does not belong to the world, but is the bride of Christ in heavenly places. Then when the church is caught up, the beast which seemed to have been destroyed is found in a new form—still as such, its deadly wound being healed; and as he had joined in rejecting Christ, he is now in the closest connection with Antichrist. At the first he deals with the Jews, makes a covenant with there, but in the last half week of Daniel turns against them, persecutes them, changes times and laws, makes the sacrifice and oblation to cease. The King, the Antichrist, establishes idolatry, and divides their land. You read his character in this point of view in Dan. 11, verse 36— “And the king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every God, and shall speak marvelous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished; for that that is determined shall be done.” In a word, in Daniel as in the part of Revelations I have referred to, is the testimony of the beast, the last form of the power which oppresses Israel when they are captive, and does so until the Lord comes and delivers, though He judges them.

Now another power, the Assyrian comes before us, Israel's great enemy when God owns them, and who will also appear on the scene in his last form in the last days, thinking, when the beast is destroyed, to possess all, but comes to his end. In verse 5 of Isa. 10 we read— “O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is my indignation!” After giving the various instruments which God has used to chasten Israel, he comes to the last and terrible invader. That was God's indignation against the rebellious people (the indignation describing the last terrible visitation of God). Compare Isaiah 26:20, 21, with Dan. 11:36, the last words of which are also a technical expression for the short work which God will, at the end, make on the earth, as in Dan. 9:27, and this chapter Isa. 10 verse 23 (compare Isa. 28:22). If you look now at the 23th verse, you will see what will make the force of it quite clear, “For yet a very little while and the indignation shall cease, and mine anger in their destruction.” That is, the whole judgment of God on Israel—His indignation—is closed in the destruction of the Assyrian.

Now, beloved friends, we will turn to chap. 30 of Isaiah; but before we do so, let us just in passing look at the passage I have referred to in chap. 28:14, 15, 16, “Wherefore hear the word of the Lord, ye scornful men, that rule His people which is in Jerusalem. Because ye have said, we have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement, when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us; for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves. Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried stone, a corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.” That is, they made, as we have seen, a covenant with the power of evil, but to no purpose. But the remnant who trusted the Lord and counted in His promise, though not yet delivered nor knowing redemption as we do, yet looking, through the testimony then given, to the Son of man, the Branch whom Jehovah had made so strong for Himself at any rate the wise ones of Daniel and all true-hearted ones, resting on such testimonies as this and Isa. 8, did not make haste or join the Antichrist, while as to the mass the hopes they had put in him and the beast are confounded, and the scourge of this invader flows through.

Afterward at the end, as we see in the following chapter 29, it is exactly the opposite (verses 4-7;) the enemies who were ready to devour are destroyed.

Now look at the end of chapter 30, and you will find this enemy and his end. “For through the voice of the LORD shall the Assyrian be beaten down, which smote with a rod. And in every place where the grounded staff shall pass, which the LORD shall lay upon him, it shall be with tarbets and harps: and in battles of shaking will he fight with it. For Tophet is ordained of old; yea, for the king [or, as I believe, “also for the king"] it is prepared; he hath made it deep and large; the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the LORD, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it.” The grounded staff is God's decreed rod. When this is laid on the Assyrian, it is the source of joy and triumph because of deliverance, the end of the indignation.

Turn now to chapter 5 of Micah where we shall see the connection of Christ with the judgment of the Assyrian and the subsequent blessing of Israel. Nothing so laid hold of a Rabbi I was conversing with, as this passage (verses 1-9.) “Now gather thyself in troops, O daughter of troops: he hath laid siege against us; they shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek. But thou Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting. Therefore will he give them up, until the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth; then the remnant of his brethren shall return unto the children of Israel And he shall stand and feed in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God; and they shall abide: for now shall he be great unto the ends of the earth. And this man shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall come into our land; and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise against him seven shepherds, and eight principal men. And they shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod in the entrances thereof: thus shall he deliver us from the Assyrian, when he cometh into our land, and when he treadeth within our borders And the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many people, as a dew from the LORD, as the showers upon the grass, that tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men. And the remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles in the midst of many people, as a lion among the beasts of the forest, as a young lion among the flocks of sheep; who, if he go through, both treadeth down, and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver. Thine hand shall be lifted up upon thine adversaries, and all thine enemies shall be cut off.”

The rejected Christ is now to be great to the ends of the earth. He is the peace, secures the peace of Israel when the Assyrian (their last rod whose destruction puts an end to the indignation) is in the land. He will at first tread in Israel's palaces; but at the end Messiah's power destroys him; and Israel will be as a lion among the Gentiles, though as the dew of divine blessing also. The enemies of the Lord will be cut off. He will judge fully rebellious Israel, indeed, but execute vengeance and fury upon the heathen such as they have not heard. At this time remark the Jews are owned, seen in their land and judged as the people of God there.

Daniel, we have seen, is occupied with the Gentiles when Israel is in captivity, and Jerusalem and the land desolate. He brings all these powers to an end but never takes up the consequent blessing. His subject is the times of the Gentiles.

Ezekiel does exactly the contrary. He goes, himself a captive, up to the taking of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, and goes then right over to the end when Israel would be restored and the enemies go up against them in their land. We will turn now to his prophecy where you will find largely developed this other great power. Chap. 38: 1-2, “and the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophecy against him.” The chief prince of Meshech, properly interpreted prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal, and then follow the names of countries which agree with the names of those of the present day under the influence of Rosh (Russia). You will remark that, in the two preceding chapters 36 and 37., you have the restoration of the people and divine revival of Israel. Now, when restored and quiet in the land, Cog comes up against them (38:8) to plunder and possess the land, but it is that the heathen may know Jehovah when He is sanctified in Gog before their eyes (verse 16.) They will then know by His judgments that He is Jehovah (23). In ch. 39 God leaves a sixth part of them, and when judgment is thus executed, God's holy name is known in the midst of His people Israel. He will not let them pollute His holy name any more, “And the heathen shall know that I am Jehovah, the Holy one in Israel.” He then calls on all the fowls of the air to come and feast on the slaughtered victims whom He has slain for a sacrifice: so many are they that it is seven months before the land is clean. This also is the one of whom He has spoken in old times by His servants the prophets, the Assyrian of the last days, in whom as these chapters plainly show, the indignation ceases.

Chapter 38:14-20. “Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say unto Gog, Thus saith the Lord God: in that day when my people of Israel dwelleth safely, shalt thou not know it? And thou shalt come from thy place out of the north parts, thou and many people with thee, all of them riding upon horses, a great company and a mighty army. And thou shalt come up against my people of Israel, as a cloud to cover the land. It shall be in the latter days, and I will bring thee against my land, that the heathen may know me, when I shall be sanctified in thee, O Gog, before their eyes. Thus saith the Lord God: Art thou he of whom I have spoken in old time by my servants the prophets of Israel, which prophesied in those days many years that I would bring thee against them? And it shall come to pass at the same time when Gog shall come against the land of Israel, saith the Lord God, that my fury shall come up in my face. For in my jealousy and in the fire of my wrath have I spoken. Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel; so that the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the heavens, and the beasts of the field, and all creeping things that creep upon the earth, and all the men that are upon the face of the earth, shall shake at my presence, and the mountains shall be thrown down, and the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground.”

Chap. 39:1-8. “Therefore, thou son of man, prophesy against Gog, and say, Thus said the Lord God; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal, and I will turn thee back, and leave but the sixth part of thee, and will cause thee to come up from the north parts, and will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel. And I will smite thy how out of thy left hand, and will cause in the arrows to fall out of thy right hand. Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou, and all thy bands, and the people that is with thee: I will give thee unto the ravenous birds of every sort, and to the beasts of the field to be devoured. Thou shalt fall upon the open field: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God. And I will send a fire on Magog, and among them that dwell carelessly in the isles. And they shall know that I am the Lord. So will I make my holy name known in the midst of my people Israel; and I will not let them pollute my holy name any more; and the heathen shall know that I am the Lord, the Holy One in Israel. Behold, it is come, and it is done, saith the Lord God; this is the day whereof I have spoken.” Ver. 21, 22. “And I will set my glory among the heathen, and all the heathen shall see my judgment that I have executed, and my hands that I have laid upon them. So the house of Israel shall know that I am the Lord their God from that day and forward.” Ver. 28, 29. “Then shall they know that I am the Lord their God, which caused them to be led into captivity among the heathen: but I have gathered them unto their own land, and have left none of them any more there. Neither will I hide my face any more from them; for I have poured out my Spirit upon the house of Israel, saith the Lord God.”

I get here this other fundamental principle, when Israel is restored, then the heathen themselves, judged that it may be so, understand that Jehovah, the God of Israel, is the Most High over all the earth, and submit to Him You will see how Psa. 8 expresses this: “O Jehovah our Lord,” says. Israel, when Christ is set up, not simply as Son of David, according to Psa. 2, which will indeed now be accomplished, but as Son of Man, “how excellent is thy name in all the earth.” This is the prayer of Psa. 67 I should multiply quotations too much, were I to quote all the Psalm which speak of this. I will allude to a remarkable series—Psa. 94 to 100. Psa. 94 calls for judgment; 95 summons Israel to repentance; 96 the heathen are called to own Jehovah, for He is coming to judge the world in righteousness; in 97 He is actually coming in clouds; in 98 the Lord is come and has made known His salvation; in 99 He is known upon the earth again, and is sitting between the cherubim; and 100 calls on all nations to come and worship Him now that His throne is set up on earth for blessing. The cry for vengeance and deliverance is the cry of the remnant from the time of God's bringing back the people till His sitting on the throne of judgment. He will send deliverance by power. The throne of iniquity will not share the power with Him. Now, grace calls souls from the evil to come to God and go to heaven, and grace characterizes the Christian though he knows vengeance will come.

I have now gone through the passages which give us the history of the beast, and a sufficient number of those which speak of the Assyrian, to have a distinct idea of these two powers, now concentrated in Western and Eastern Europe. Zechariah never speaks of the Assyrian, He belonged to the captivity of Israel, though the Jews were restored that Messiah might be presented to them. But the post-captivity prophets do not call the Jews God's people unless speaking of their future; and the other prophets, those before the captivity, never speak of the beast as such, because Israel was owned, God's throne still there. Ezekiel, we have seen, goes over from Babylon to Israel again in the land. We have more directly to say to the beast because the time is going on in which they rule: only that in result it becomes open rebellion. There is a raising up of the beast from a seemingly fatal wound in an utterly diabolical character. God has put into the hearts of a little remnant of the Jews then to look to Him. But the nation blossoms and buds and seems as if it was beginning a time of full prosperity in its own land. But then it is bruised and eaten down, the resort of beast and birds of prey. These are judged and Israel is received and blessed. And if, says the apostle, the falling of them away be the riches of the Gentiles, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead to the world.

All this calls our hearts, beloved, to a far more divine apprehension that our portion is in heaven while Christ is rejected, and that Christ having been rejected Christians are, and that Christ being in heaven their conversation or citizenship is there also. No living here anymore, though we pass through it as pilgrims and strangers. What I have to do is to convince the world that there is a power which delivers from it to manifest Christ and Christ's motives in it. If ye do well and suffer for it and take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. The danger for the saints now is that instead of seeing evil going and rising up to a head against the Lord, man is thinking of improving the world and bringing in good. What is before us is that in the last days perilous times shall come. But men are wise in their own conceits and fancy they will do better than Christ and the Apostles—not make Christians for God, but improve the earth. The testimony of God is that the professing church and the world are both ripening up to evil and that the Lord is coming to receive us to Himself, and to judge the habitable earth in righteousness, and reign for its blessing, and primarily over the restored Jewish people.

David and Solomon

1 Chron. 21, 2 Chron. 5; 6

David is convicted, brought to hope, established in the sense of deliverance. Affections suited to these conditions mark his spirit. But when established, he is as personally devoted as when hoping (21:4, and 22, 29), and this is beautiful. Also, when established, he holds to the place consecrated by redemption. (21:28-30). These two points appear still in souls brought where David was.

Solomon was introduced to further truths, as God's delight in grace, and in the bold faith which enjoys it; for the glory fills the house, where mercy was rejoicing, and where the people were triumphing in it. Solomon accepts it, and seems as one overwhelmed at this disclosure of divine joy.

The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved

I have been just feeling that I can fully enjoy the truth which these words convey. And I would cherish such an experience and ask the Lord to fix and enlarge it.

It is far from intimating that one is more interested than another in the grace or salvation of God, or loved with a more faithful and enduring love. But it does intimate that there may be a more personal attachment between the Master and some of His disciples, than between Him and others. All, I may say, sat at supper with Him, while only one leaned on His bosom. All continued with Him in His temptations, and are to receive the kingdom together, but only three were in the garden, or on the holy hill with Him. For there is more personal oneness of thought and feeling in some than in others, more of that which, as among ourselves, draws the willing heart along.

If I look at a brother whose way savors much of that which I know Jesus must delight in, being weak, and self-renouncing, and unaffectedly humble, and withal devoted and unworldly, I may remember John, and see that disciple whom Jesus loved reflected in my brother. But then, how happy is it to remember that John himself was but one of a company whom the same Jesus had chosen and called, and bound to Himself forever. Did John exclude Thomas or Bartholomew? Thomas or Bartholomew, in the great evangelic sense, were as much to Christ as John. The one was not a whit a more accepted man than the others.

This is sure and blessed, as well as plain and simple. I may rejoice in it with all certainty. And if I have any love to Him who has called me to such assured and eternal blessedness, will I not rejoice in this, that He has an object in which He can take more delight than I must well know I and my way can afford Him?

Thus do I find reasons for enjoying that sentence, again and again repeated, “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” and for delighting also in the thought that such a truth finds its illustration among the saints now, as it did in the midst of the apostles in earlier days.

The love with which we have to do is too perfect to be partial. It does not act irregularly or carelessly. We are all the objects of it. Thomas is not neglected because John is thus loved. But because this love is real, it is moved in this way by a John. But when I see a John leaning on Jesus while I myself am at a distance, let me have grace to look still and to say, “It is good for me to be here.” If I am not in the same experience, still it is blessed to enjoy the thought that another is there. Peter was gladdened by the vision of a glory in Moses and Elias, though it was all beyond him. So is my happy and thankful spirit to entertain the thought of my more heavenly brother pressing the bosom of our common Lord.

A Few Words on Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon

In the Book of Ecclesiastes we get the man Solomon the wisest of monarchs, seeking out that good under the sun with which man may satisfy himself. He goes to prove his heart with mirth and folly and wisdom, with learning, philosophy, natural history, music, wine, wealth, and the special delights of kings His wisdom, too, remains with him. God allows him, as it were, to try what is to be found on earth. And what does it all come to? Just this: “all is vanity and vexation of spirit; vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”

In the Song of Solomon we get another thing—the soul satisfied with one object only, desirous to grasp it more largely and to enter into it more fully. That object is CHRIST, the object of the soul's affections. If we have but one object, we shall be satisfied with His goodness and loving-kindness, and we shall seek only to know its fullness. If it be said, “Well, I want to experience that the world cannot satisfy,” I answer that Solomon has far more experience than you ever can have: he fully tried it, and all is vanity and vexation of spirit. But as in Song of Solomon when the soul is satisfied with one object, and that object is Christ, all is peace and satisfaction: “I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.”

The Effect

People often confound the effect produced on man, the effect which makes him own the truth and the authority of the word, with a judgment passed by man upon this word, as upon a matter submitted to him. Never could the word be thus presented as subject to human judgment: it would be to deny its own nature; it would be to say that it is not God who speaks. Could God say that he is not God? If this cannot be no more could he speak and admit that his word has not its own authority

Notes of a Lecture on Ephesians 1

AT the last lecture I mentioned that the two Epistles in which the second coming of the Lord is not spoken of are the Galatians and the Ephesians. It may seem strange that, this being the case, I should have selected on this occasion the chapter we have just read. But I have done so, (and shall refer to other passages with the same intention, desiring to found all I say upon Scripture) because that chapter gives us a general view of the whole scheme and plan that will be fully accomplished at the second coming of our Lord. It does not speak of the fact of Christ's coming, but it does tell of the purpose which God has, and that will then be accomplished. And not only that, but it shows us the way in which the church of God (I mean all true saints gathered to Christ by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven) at the coming of Christ have a portion or part in it—what their place in this great plan of God is, that plan having necessarily for its center the exaltation of the Son, “the brightness of God's glory.” He was humbled to be exalted.

The way in which God has dealt with us, beloved friends, is this—He has brought us completely to Himself, having respect to the whole value of Christ's work; and, in doing that, He has given us a place with Christ makes us like Christ; and, having thus made us near to Himself, He then unfolds to us all His plans. It is not merely being made safe, but, being brought as children to God: “all things are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's.” But then, having done that, He treats you—as His expression is to Abraham, and as Christ's expression is to His disciples—as friends. The Lord says, “Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do?” And what He then told Him. was not merely that he personally was in His favor—that He told him long before. He does not merely show him the promises which belonged to him and his seed. But He told him too what concerned the world, and did not immediately concern himself. This was the special mark of friendship.

If I am dealing with a man with whom I am on good terms, but not on terms of friendship, I tell him whatever is needed with regard to the business between us, according to the common courtesies of life; and there it ends. But if I have a friend, I tell him what is in my heart. This is what God does with His children—as Christ said to His disciples, “Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what His Lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.”

And there is not a greater proof of the extent to which the church has lost its conscious identity with Christ, than its giving up its expectation of the coming of Christ. And why is that, but because there are so many whose hearts do not enter into this thought, that God has brought them so near to Himself that they are considered as having been taken into His family? “Sons and daughters,” the expression is, and sons and daughters too of full age. That was not their position under the law. Therefore it is said that “the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant though he be lord of all. But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father.” And, because you have the Spirit, because you have an unction from the Holy one, you know all things, having the consciousness of being sons of God, sons of full age, so as to possess the confidence of the Father.

And the same Spirit, who is the Spirit of adoption, unfolds to us all the things which are freely given to us of God. “It is written, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” And there people generally stop; whereas the apostle goes on to say, in order to show the difference between that and our state, “But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the timings which are freely given to us of God.” Now is it not a strange thing that people should quote that passage which declares that man's heart hath not conceived the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him, and should pass over the declaration which follows, and which contrasts the position of Christians, saying God had revealed them unto them, and given them the Spirit to enable them to understand them? And is it not a sorrowful thing, when the Lord hath put us in such a place that He confides to us, (poor creatures as we are,) in a certain sense, the glory of Christ, having confided to us all His thoughts about Christ, that we should say, “Oh! we cannot pretend to such things as that?” I will not say it is ingratitude—it is worse, it is dishonoring the love God has shown to us. Suppose a child were to say, “I do not pretend to the confidence of my father; I do not want that; I am simply willing to obey him,” I would say to such a one, “you are a very unhappy child, extremely unhappy; you do not know what a child's place is.”

It is just that which the apostle brings out in this chapter. He first speaks (although 1 do not dwell upon that now—not that it is not precious: I thought, while reading, how sweet it was) he speaks in the early part of the chapter of the place in which we are set before God— “that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved; in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.” You are brought into God's likeness of righteousness and holiness before God— “holy and without blame before him in love.” You are brought into the place of sons, having the adoption of children, and you have got the forgiveness of your sins and are accepted in the beloved Himself. That is the place you are brought into: there is no other place for a Christian. And now, says the Lord, having put you there, I am going to tell you what my plan is for Christ's glory and your glory along with him. He says, wherein—that is, in “the riches of his grace” — “he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence; having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in Himself; that in the dispensation of the fullness of times” He hath not only given us this redemption, so that we know where we are in our relationship to God, but, being in this relationship, has shown us all this of his plan— “that in the dispensation of the fullness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in him.”

Mark where we are connected with it: “in whom also we have obtained an inheritance.” We are heirs, as the apostle says to the Romans— “heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ.” That is, God says, I am going to give all to Christ; I am to gather together in one all things which are in heaven and on earth in Him; and with Him you are joint heirs—with Him you have got the inheritance. That is the way in which the chapter presents to us the purpose and thought of God.

Now just look at various passages which show how He brings this about, and the way in which, beloved friends, He will take us to put us into the inheritance. For it is for this we are waiting. We are not waiting to be heirs, but we are waiting for the inheritance. We are not waiting to be sons—we are all the children of God through faith in Christ Jesus; but we are waiting to get what belongs to the sons. Poor earthen vessels that we are here, in the wilderness, we are waiting for that. He has given us “the Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of His glory.” That is, the glory of His grace we have got, the redemption; but the glory we have not got—this we are waiting for.

Such is the order of his prayer withal: our calling our nearness to God; our inheritance, that is, everything of which we are heirs along with Christ; and, then, there is the power which brings us into it—that is, the very same power which raised Christ from the dead has raised every believer out of his state of death in sin to the same place with Christ. And, having brought them into one, at the end he shows us the place to which Christ is raised— “at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but in that which is to come; and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all.”

This enables us to see a little of the way in which God accomplishes His plan, and it was to show what that plan is that I read this chapter— “That in the dispensation of the fullness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth” —under Christ as the Head. But when Christ takes this place as man—of course as God He is over all always—but when He takes this place as man, we take the inheritance along with Him. We are joint-heirs— “in whom also we have obtained an inheritance.” And, again in Romans, “if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.”

Now the principle of that is what many Christians sadly unmindful of, having lost the consciousness of the way in which they have been brought by God into the same place as Christ, who became a man on purpose to bring us into the same place with Himself. “The glory which thou gavest me I have given them.” If He is a Son, so are we. He is our life, our righteousness; and we share His glory, the fruit of righteousness. When He was transfigured, Moses and Elias appeared in the same glory, talking familiarly with Him. And we should consider that the Lord has come down in lowliness and humiliation amongst us, that our hearts might get neat enough to Him to understand that.

Having got the plan then, we shall now go through some passages of Scripture to show how the Lord brings it about. If you will turn to Psa. 2 you will see the way in which the Lord was first presented on earth to have the earthly dominion, and was rejected, we shall see immediately how the two things are connected. “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord, and against His anointed.” This is quoted by Peter with reference to Herod and Pilate, &c. “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh, the Lord shall have them in derision.” That is, Christ Himself shall have them in derision. “Then shall He speak unto them in His wrath, and vex them in His sore displeasure.” This is not come yet. “Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion” —in spite of all this rejection— “I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possessions. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.” These judgments, of course, are not come yet.

And now, as confirmatory of what I have just said, let me ask you to turn to the Book of Revelation, at the end of the second chapter, to show the way in which we are connected with Christ. He that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers; even as I received of my Father.” I refer to this now for the purpose of showing that even in such things the saints are connected with Christ, although these, of course, are not the most blessed things in which they are connected with Him It is said immediately afterward; “and I will give him the morning star” —Christ Himself; and this is infinitely more precious. But still He associates them with Himself in all His glory. He receives these heathen for His inheritance and breaks them in pieces; and so shall you with Him, if you are faithful.

It is strange to see how the Church of God has lost the sense of all things; and I refer to these passages to show how the saints are associated with Christ, even with reference to those extreme cases. “Do ye not know,” says Paul to the Corinthians, “that the saints shall judge the world.” He tells them just to think of that, and then to consider whether they were not worthy “to judge the smallest matter,” (speaking of saints going to law with one another.) Are you not able, any of you, to settle the commonest things between yourselves— “know ye not that we shall judge angels?” It was necessary to tell them this, because they had not got hold of a right understanding of the place in which Christ has put the saints, because they did not see their association with Christ, in all the fullness of its meaning. I have referred to this association with Christ in judgment, not at all because it is the most blessed part of it, but as confirmatory of what I have said about the association of the saints with Christ.

Observe that the second Psalm speaks of Christ's coming and being rejected. Peter quotes it in that view and Paul also the words, “Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.” And, being rejected, the Lord (that is, Christ) is there represented as laughing—which is of course a figure—at all the raging of the nations; and it is said that the time will come when He will sit in Zion in spite of them all, and have all the world given Him for His inheritance. This, however, does not present Him in the place, in which the New Testament largely represents Him. Here He is only connected with the fate of the Jews, and the judgment of the heathen and rebels at the time of the end.

At His first coming, He was rejected as Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed. And mark what light this throws even upon the Gospel. We find Christ charging His disciples strictly that they should no more say He was the Christ, because He was to be rejected, for “the son of man,” He says, “shall suffer many things.” It was, as if He had said— “I am not now to take my place as King of Zion. I come in another way. I come to be the suffering Son of man, in order that I may afterward take a far higher place of glory.” You find accordingly in Luke and the other gospels, that He strictly charges His disciples not to say that He was the Christ, because that was really over, in consequence of His being rejected. Now take the eighth Psalm— “O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who has set thy glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength, because of thine enemies; that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.” This, you know, was fulfilled, when He rode upon the ass's colt into Jerusalem. “What is man, that thou art mindful of him, and the Son of man that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands: thou hast put all things under his feet.” It is there intimated that, though as Christ He was rejected, the consequence of His being rejected was that He takes His place as Son of man, in which He was to have everything put under His feet. You will see how the apostle reasons on that in the New Testament.

These two Psalms show His coming among the Jews, and being rejected, and yet His taking His place over these rebels in spite of them at the end. But the present consequence of His rejection is that He takes the place which he always gives Himself in the Gospels of being the Son of Man. Coming to the New Testament, you will find this eight Psalm is quoted in the chapter I have just read from the Ephesians, “He hath put things under His feet” and, being in that place, “gave Him to be the head over all things to the church, which is His body.” The church is His body, making the complete man, and is therefore said to be “the fullness of Him that filleth all in all.” —Christ is a divine person, though a man, and fills all things, but it is the church which makes Him, as the Son Of man, complete, makes up what is called the mystical Christ of which He is the head, all the members of the church making up His body.

The church, therefore, is as closely associated with Him, as a man's own flesh is with himself. This is the comparison employed in Eph. 5, “No man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church; for we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.” And in this body there being but one Spirit, the Church is associated with Christ as taking the headship over everything. We see Christ, the Son of Man, in the counsels of God set over everything in heaven and on earth; and we, as being close to Him, His redeemed ones, His brethren, joint-heirs, and members of His body, are completely identified, with Him in His place of headship. You thus see the connection of the Church with Christ's glory at His second coming.

You find the same thing in the second of the Hebrews, where the apostle, referring to the eight Psalm, shows how far it is accomplished “But one, in a certain place, testified, saying, What is man that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; Thou crownedst him with glory and honor, and didst set him over the works of thy hands. Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him.” That time is not yet come. “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor.” Mark what we have got here. Here is God's purpose of putting everything in subjection under Christ without any exception—there is nothing excepted that is not put under Him. In fact He created it all, and therefore is heir of it all. But the point is this, that what He created as God, He takes for an inheritance as man, in order that we might take it with Him; but that time is not come yet. We do not see all things put under Him, but we do see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor; we see that half accomplished, but not the other half; we do not see all things put under him. This is what the apostle states, and the reason of it we get in Psa. 110 which the apostle also quotes in the Hebrews, and to which the Lord Himself appealed in reasoning with the Pharisees on this very matter. “The Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.” And therefore in Heb. 10 the apostle says, “He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified” —that is, the work of their redemption — “from henceforth expecting till his enemies he made his footstool,” till they are all put under his feet by God.

I shall have another opportunity of referring to that. But I am speaking now of the blessed assurance it is to the saints, that Christ is sitting at the right hand of God until, and expecting till, His enemies are made His footstool. They are not made His footstool yet.

If they were, He would not allow matters to go on in the world as they do now. It is another thing which God is doing now. He is gathering out His joint-heirs, and, having this purpose, He says—Sit thou at my right hand until the time when thine enemies shall be made thy footstool. As to the question when that time shall be, “that day and hour knoweth no man, not even the Son.” But it is said to the Son—Sit thou at my right hand till that time is revealed.

We have the plan then as clearly set forth as language can put it. We see Jesus, when He has by Himself purged our sins, “set on the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens,” and then by the gospel, gathering out His joint heirs. And we are associated with Him, while He is there at the right hand of God, associated with Him as united to Him by the one Spirit.

If you will turn now to another passage, 1 Cor. 15, you will see the way in which we get this place of glory at the resurrection, all things being under His feet. “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order, Christ the first fruits, afterward they that are Christ's at his coming” —those that are His heirs, they and nobody else. “Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith, all thing are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted which did put all things under him.” That is, God the Father is not put under him, but that very exception proves in the strongest way that everything else is—God the Father being alone excepted.

But it is said, we do not see that yet. Do you think that all the oppression and wars and wickedness and horrors which now mark the history of the earth, would go on if everything was now put under Him? It is Satan, and not Christ, who is now the prince and God of this world. It is strange how many people fancy that the cross put an end to that. It was exactly the contrary. The cross was the one grand demonstration-and there never was such a demonstration before—that Satan is the prince and God of this world. “The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me,” said our Savior. Until Christ had been rejected, Satan was never called the prince of this world. Before that, Jehovah was on the earth, and in the temple was the Shekinah of glory. But when at last He came into this world in the person of Christ, and the world rejected Him, then from that time Satan is the prince of this world. And it is after that, that the apostle says, “In whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not.” When the Lord comes again, He will be the prince of the world, but, till He comes again, Satan is that prince.

If you will now look to Luke 19 you will see how the Lord Himself puts it, when He speaks of the invisible God, the first born of every creature; for by him” —this is the reason why He is set over all things— “by him were all things created that are in heaven, and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created by him and for him” He is to take them all under subjection, but not in this state of wickedness in which they are now. “We see not yet all things put under Him.”

And how does He take them? He takes them as a man— “whom he hath appointed heir of all things,” (Heb. 1:2), and we are appointed joint heirs with Him, as the Scripture tells us. You will see, therefore, how the second part comes in. “And he is before all things, and by him all things consist” —that is, because He is a divine person— “And be is the head of the body, the church; who is the beginning, the first born from the dead; that in all things he might have the pre-eminence.” He has this double headship, which is also brought together in the chapter of Ephesians I was reading—head over all things, and head to the church. “By him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things, in earth or things in heaven. And you that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled, in the body of his flesh through death.” “Hath reconciled,” —it is always hath, as regards the saints. It is not said “He will reconcile,” but “hath reconciled.”

But the reconciliation of all things in heaven and earth is future, because Satan is not yet bound. Even Christianity itself has been corrupted in the most awful way, because Satan is not bound; and the corruptest thing in the whole universe is corrupted Christianity. The apostle says— “by him to reconcile all things unto himself, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven,” or, as it is in the Ephesians, “to gather together in one all things in Christ” —but he does not say he has done that yet. Nor does he speak at all of those who are under the earth. When he talks of subjection, of everything bowing to Him, it is said, “That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth.” Of these things he does not say “reconcile” but “bow;” “but you,” he says “hath He reconciled.”

You thus see the truth about the double headship of Christ, His being Head of the Church, and His being Head over all things; and then the double reconciliation, the present reconciliation and redemption of the Church through grace, and then the reconciliation of all things in heaven and in earth. Now we see not yet all things put under Him, but we see Him by faith, sitting at the right hand of God, until His enemies are made His footstool. And when that time comes, and they are all put under Him, He will take possession, according to the character given to God in the appellation used by Melchisedec when he came out to bless Abraham— “The most High God, possessor of heaven and earth;” and when Christ becomes in all its fullness the King and Priest upon His throne, God will have that title going into a far country to get the kingdom, and there receiving it, and then returning and executing the judgments to which he refers. “As they heard these things, he added and spake a parable, because he was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear.” They were looking for this, and fancied that, instead of His being rejected as He was, they would get the kingdom with Him in an earthly way directly. “He said therefore, a certain nobleman went into a far country, to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return. And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I come.” That is the service of Christians, while the Lord is away. He has gone away to receive the kingdom, and has not returned yet. Then He judged the servants when he came back. “And it came to pass, that when he was returned, having received the kingdom, then he commanded those servants to be called unto him,” and begins to take account of their service. And then, that being finished, he says, “But those mine enemies which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.” This is after He has received the kingdom and come back again.

He does not judge while He is away. It is said, “The Father hath committed all judgment unto the Son; that all men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father.” But, if He was to begin to judge now, He would have to close the time of grace and the gathering in of the church. The Father judges the saints, but it is in the way of discipline” If ye call on the Father, who, without respect of persons, judgeth according to every man's work.” But, as regards definite judgment, it is said in John, “The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the son.” When the Son returns, He will take notice of His enemies and execute judgment upon them. But meanwhile He has gone away to receive the kingdom, and has not returned. When He does, He will not allow all this wickedness which we now see, to go on. But for the present, this is the time when we must watch in faithfulness, occupying till He come, and trading properly with those talents, the spiritual gifts He has given us.

You will find this remarkably brought out, if you turn to Col. 1. I wish to dwell a little on this, that we may get to as full an understanding as possible of the thoughts and scope and plan of God, which seem to me to be very plainly set forth in Scripture. Begin at the 12Th verse, which shows where we, (I mean all believers) are “Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet.” He hath made us meet—that is all settled. You will always find this in Scripture; you will not find anything there about growing to be meet; it speaks about growing up to Christ in everything, but this is a different thing. “Which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son; who is the. image We come then to the next thing, which I will just state—I do not know how far we may be able to go through it this evening. Taking these two statements, that He is to reconcile everything in heaven and earth, and again, that He is to gather together, in one, all things which are both in heaven and on earth, we also see, in several of the passages which I have quoted, that the Church, or the saints who compose it, are joint-heirs with Him. What I have been seeking to show you, is, that the Church of God (all the saints whom in this present time God is gathering by His grace in the Gospel) are being associated with Christ, as the center of blessing, that they get the central place with Himself, under whom all possible existences are to be placed. But the time for this which the Scripture speaks of is when Christ receives the kingdom and returns, when the dispensation of the fullness of times comes. Then everything will be brought into order and blessedness under the authority of Christ. When God the Father has put everything under His feet, He will bring everything into order, and will then deliver up His kingdom. But the central thing during the dispensation of the fullness of times in the heavenly places will be the Church, and the central thing in earthly places will be the Jews.

This brings in what are the two great subjects of Holy Scripture, after personal redemption. The Church is that in which He displays sovereign grace, bringing its members to share the glory of Christ. The Jews are those in whom He reveals as a center, the government of this world. These are the two great subjects in Scripture, after personal salvation. The Scripture speaks of the Church of God, as those who are associated with Christ, who are the heirs of Christ's glory. But the moment we say that, we cannot but think how wondrous it is that poor wretched creatures like us should be brought into the same glory with Christ—should be brought into the same place with Himself. And the work of reconciliation is to embrace all things in heaven and on earth.

This world is not to remain forever the sporting place and play-ground of the devil. That will not be allowed forever. The Son of David will yet have His place in it, and His glory too, as its ruler, and the world will then be altered. “None shall hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain.” There is a time coming when Christ will he the Prince of Peace. He has declared positively that this is not at the present time. “Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth; I tell you nay; but rather division. For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother, &c.” That is, this is the time when the bringing in the light awakens the passions of men, and, until Christ's second coming puts them down, they continue their raging.

And Christians now have to take up the cross and follow Him. Do you think if Christ was reigning, His followers would only have the cross? Why, they would have the crown. We are positively told that our part is the cross. We must now take it up every day. But, when Christ reigns, that will not be the part of His people. He will “come to be glorified in His saints,” and a glorious place they will get, when He comes to reign.

When this time comes, to gather together all things in one, the Church of God will be the center of all things in heavenly places, and the Jews the center of all things on earth, Christ being the head over all. That is what we find stated in the chapter of Ephesians which we have read— “That ye may know what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward, who believe, according to the working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ, when He raised him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named not only in this world but in that which is to come” —the time namely of which we are speaking— “And hath put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the head over all things to the Church, which is His body.”

It is the same power which raises the saints, and so, in the next chapter, he says, speaking of it now as already got spiritually— “and hath raised up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus; that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of His grace, in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus” —God, in setting us over angels and principalities and powers in the world to come, showing the exceeding riches of His grace in the place he has given to us, in His kindness towards us. This, beloved friends, is what I have been anxious to show you, by bringing before you these various passages, that thus in the ages to come God is going to show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward you. Angels are going to learn the immense riches of God's grace—and how? By our being made partakers of the glory of Christ, in God's kindness to us through Christ Jesus—so that, when they see Mary Magdalene, the thief on the cross, the woman of the city that was a sinner, any one of us, in the same place of glory with Christ, they may admire the exceeding riches of His grace. Laying hold of this even now by faith in the teaching of God's Spirit, although we have not got all the fruits of it as yet, we may find our present place very profitable in the way of discipline, and exercise, and spiritual education, still its full development is in the future, when God's kindness to us shall be shown to the angels.

And now let me try to show you a little the way in which the Lord brings us into this place of association with Himself. And first I will refer you to the passage in ch. 17 of John's Gospel, where the Savior states the fact, that the saints share with Him His glory, and the love of the Father. A wonderful passage it is, as showing that love of Christ which passeth knowledge. “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.” This refers to the present time, or at least to what ought to be the case in the present time. And then He goes on to the time to come. “And the glory which thou gavest me, I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may [not believe, but may] know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.” All the glory Thou hast given me, He says—that is, the glory He takes as man, for as a divine person His glory was eternal—I have given them, and this, that the world, when they see My people like Me, and having the same glory as Myself, may know that Thou hast sent Me. It is not believe; this is spoken with reference to the present time. Saints should be one now, as a testimony that there is a power in the Spirit of God which overcomes all fleshly differences. Alas! that is not so. This too is a precious subject, but I must pass it over just now, confining myself to the one I am more immediately dealing with. Of the present time it is said, “that the world may believe;” of the future, “that the world may know.” “The glory which thou gavest me, I have given them, that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me.” They will know it plainly enough for their condemnation, for the condemnation of those who are rebels, when they see those whom they have been accustomed to despise, coming with Christ in glory.

Now do you believe this, beloved friends? Our hearts ought to know and recognize that love. Not fathom it, for that they cannot do, but confide in it, and to that extent know it, although it passes knowledge. And, as you see, the time is coming when the world too will know that love of God to us. We pass on to verse 25— “O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee; but I have known thee, and these have known that Thou has sent Me. And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it; that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.” That is the present good we enjoy—that the love wherewith Christ is loved should be in us—that we should have it in our souls. No one can fathom it: it passes knowledge; but still we are to have it and to know it, and that by Christ being in us. I am not to wait, till the world sees I am with Christ in glory, to know it myself; for the Father now loves me as He has loved Christ.

If you turn again to the Corinthians 15, you will see this same truth brought out in its relation to the resurrection. The point I am now to impress upon you is, that Scripture shows us these two things—that we are to be like Him, completely like Him, save that He is a divine person; and that the time we shall be like Him is when we shall be raised from the dead. It is then we shall appear with Him. We are not of the world now, but it is said that the world will only know that we have been loved as Christ was loved, when they see us in the same place of glory with Him, when the Lord takes us up to be with Him and to put us in this glory; so that when He appears to the world we shall appear along with Him in the same glory.

The fact that it is so that we shall so appear with Him in the same glory, we have seen already from various passages which I quoted on the last occasion, but I shall refer you to some more particularly. At the forty-seventh verse of 1 Cor. 15, it is said, “the first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy” —all like to their father Adam; “and, as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly,” that is like what Christ is, not speaking of His divinity— “and as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.” We shall be like Him, we shall be just the same as Himself. He does not say merely that we shall be there, in heaven, but like Him. But first, “as is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy” —that is, like Adam, poor, wretched sinners, mortal creatures, like him; whereas, “as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.” This is the full absolute statement of the fact. Then he adds, with respect to the fact of the glory—putting it of course as in the future, not having yet come— “as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly;” and he goes on, “Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.” As it is said before, “it is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory.”

Now let us refer to some of the passages which show how Christ receives us to Himself. I follow the teachings of scripture throughout, that we may get solidly grounded in what Christ communicates to us. He says, “In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am there ye may be also.” He has gone into His Father's house, but He will come again and receive us to Himself, that where He is there we may he also. He was going up then with a body, going up glorious, not as yet having all things under His feet, but crowned with glory and honor, and He says to His disciples—you must wait and occupy till I come again. But now, before He comes, we see what He is to do with us who are in the same glory— “I will come again and receive you unto myself,” as He said in the previous chapter, “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.” It was as if he had said—I cannot stay with you, as King and Messiah now, but I am washing you that ye may be fit to reign with Me when I come again. I am, therefore, still your servant in the sense of intercession and the like, and by my all-prevailing intercession, I will wash you daily, because if you are to have a part with Me in my kingdom, you must be made like myself.

In like manner, we get what may be called the public announcement of this in the fourth chapter of 1St Thessalonians— “Them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord.” See how the apostle constantly expected the coming of the Lord. Some people have boldly dared to say that Paul made a mistake in expecting the coming of the Lord in his day. It is they who are making an awful mistake. It was never revealed when Christ would come, and Paul did not pretend to know it. But he knew that that time had come when we should always be expecting Him, instead of saying my Lord delayeth His coming, and beginning therefore to eat and drink with the drunken, and to beat the men-servants and the maid-servants. It was, therefore, that Paul put himself in this class, “we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord.” And what was the effect of that? He lived like a man who expected Christ every day, and when Christ comes, he will get the fruit of that, while those people who put off the expectation of Christ's coming, and do not wait for it, allowing their hearts to go out after covetousness and such like things, will also get the fruit of their so doing.

The time of the second coming of Christ is declared not to be revealed. Paul got a revelation that he should soon die, and he knew it. Peter also got a revelation that he must shortly put off this tabernacle, and of course knew it. But it was not revealed to them when Christ should come. Therefore Paul says, “we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,” Christ having overcome death. We may all die before Christ's coming—no one knows the moment of it; still we may use the language— “we who are alive and remain at the coming of the Lord.” It is said of the man who thinks Christ is delaying his coming, that he turns to what is bad, smiting his fellow-servants, and eating and drinking with the drunken. And it is said, that while the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept, the wise virgins as well as the foolish; that is, the Church lost a sense of the present expectation of Christ. Even the wise servants had to be waked up again, and it was a mercy to them to rouse them up in time, because to His people Christ is ever faithful. But it is the characteristic of the faithful servant that he is expecting, The church of Philadelphia was expecting the coming of Christ, and it is called the word of His patience— “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience,”

The passage in Thessalonians goes on— “We which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first,” —nobody else; I shall dwell upon that at another time, but I just notice it now in passing. The shout, the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God, are not to be taken as the voice of God to all the world to raise the righteous and the wicked. “The shout” is a military term; whatever the precise term now equivalent to it, it is that which follows “stand at ease.” It was first used with reference to calling rowers in the trireme, and afterward as a military term. When soldiers are left to go about at their ease, and are then all suddenly called back into the ranks, it is the command given them for that purpose, to which the word “shout” here used is equivalent. But the only persons who hear it are “the dead in Christ,” Christ being represented as in this way gathering together His own troops. “The dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.”

Here, then, we have the details of it. The Lord hath declared that he will come and receive us into Himself; and now the apostle, by the revelation given unto him, explains how it will be. He will come and call us up to meet the Lord in the air. The passage in 1 Corinthians, which I have already read, refers to the same thing, when it says, “afterward they that are Christ's at His coming.” “But every man in his own order, Christ the first fruits.” The specific thing here is, that it is not a resurrection of the dead, but a resurrection from among the dead. The raising of Christ was not a resurrection “of the dead,” simply, but a resurrection “from among the dead.” This was its whole character, a taking up from among the dead, and why? Because the Father's delight was in Him. And why are we in like manner taken up from among the dead? Because His delight is in us. And therefore at the proper time the Lord comes—(it is not said, appears)—and calls us up to be forever with the Lord, to take our place associated with Christ, partaking of that glory which you have already seen referred to in the words “as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.”

But what we are called to expect is not to die—we may die, and a blessed thing it is too, to die; but what we are to look for and expect, is, as it is expressed in 2 Corinthians 5, “not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.” That Christ's power over death may be fully shown, He takes to Himself mortal men, whether alive or dead: if alive, He changes them into glory without dying; if they are dead, He raises them. This is the first thing He does. He raises the dead first, and then the living are changed; and they go to meet the Lord in the air. He has predestinated us “to be conformed to the image of His Son, that he might be the first born among many brethren.” And, as we have seen, “the glory which thou gavest me, I have given them.” This then is our portion of heavenly things.

And, if you turn to Col. 3 you will see that, when Christ appears, we shall appear in this glory along with Himself and like Him. He will have already come and taken us up to Himself; and then He comes manifesting Himself to the world, and we appear with Him You will remember what I have before quoted, that the glory which was given Him, He hath given to us, that the world might know, &c. Now turning to Col. 3, and you will see how thoroughly the apostle identifies us with Christ. Look first at chapter 2:20, “If ye be dead with Christ.” Then, at the beginning of the third chapter, “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God.” He is hid in God; He is your life, and your life therefore is hid there. “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory.” When He appears, we shall appear with Him. There can be no separation. If He is hid in God, our life is hid in God. If he appears, we appear. If He appears in glory, we must appear in glory with Him. We are heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ.

You will see the same thing in the 1St Epistle of John—only the same truth comes out in different shapes— “Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God” —this, that we should get Christ's own name (what wonder of love is this that we should get Christ's own title of relationship)— “therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not” —showing that we have got the same place with Him He says, “I go to my Father, and your Father, to my God and your God” —I have accomplished your redemption and the effect or that is, that I have put you in the same place with Myself. “I will declare thy name unto my brethren in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee.” “Therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not.” It is no wonder that it does not recognize us, if it did not recognize Him. “Beloved, now are we the sons of God” —this is the present time— “and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.”

Further, as to this appearing with Him, I shall now refer to the Book of Revelation; but, before doing that, you may turn for a moment to Zech. 14, where it is said the Lord shall come and all His saints with Him, and his feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives. This is referred to by the angel, when, after Christ's ascension from Mount Olivet, he said to the disciples, “Why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.” Again in verse 14 of the epistle of Jude, you find— “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with myriads of his saints, to execute judgment upon all.” Here they are associated with Christ in the executing of judgments. “The Lord cometh with ten thousands” —properly myriads, that is, an immense number— “of his saints to execute judgment.” This shows how entirely we are associated with Christ. And what a place does not that put us in! Yet Scripture is so simple and plain upon the point, that it cannot be misinterpreted.

You will find the same truth in Thessalonians 1. I prefer quoting many passages to enlarging upon them, that our faith may stand, not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. The Thessalonians were suffering dreadful persecutions; and the apostle told them— “we glory in you in the Churches of God, for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that ye endure; which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer; seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you. And to you who are troubled, rest with us; when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven, with His mighty angels, in flaming fire, taken vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power; when He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all them that believe.” He comes with these ten thousands or myriads of His saints.

You find a distinct statement of their coming given in figure in the Revelation. At chap. 17 it is said— “These shall make war with the Lamb.” All the kings of the earth shall be found, not in blessing, joined with Christ, but in open war with the Lamb, joined with the beast. “These shall make was with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them; for He is the Lord of lords, and the King of kings; and they that are with Him are called, and chosen, and faithful.” Other passages show us that angels will be with Him, but it is not angels that are here spoken of as being with Him. The angels may be described as “faithful,” and “chosen,” because the Scripture speaks of the “elect” angels, but these that are with Him are the “called,” and it is the saints who are “called by the grace of God.” These “called” persons then who are with Him are the saints. Having seen who they are, turn now to chapter 19— “And I saw heaven opened; and behold, a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He doth judge and make war.”

You have seen all through that He is coming to judge the wicked on the earth—a thing greatly forgotten, that there is a judgment of the quick as well as the dead. “As in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not, until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.” “His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written that no man knew but he himself. And he was clothed in a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called the Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean” —which, he says elsewhere, is the righteousness of the saints. I close now, as regards the quotation of passages.

On the last occasion we found, running through the whole series of passages quoted, that the Lord's coming was the one thing kept before the Church as its hope in the Scripture, and that it connected itself with every kind of thought and feeling the saints had, that they were even looked upon as being converted to wait for the Son of God, that every other doctrine of Scripture was connected with it—that what marked a decaying church was the thought that “the Lord delayeth His coming,” and that what woke them up was the cry, “Behold the bridegroom cometh.”

Then to-night we have found that the Lord reveals to us with wisdom and prudence His plan, namely, “that he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth” —reconciling them all in Christ—not merely for their own selfish good, but as a plan for Christ's glory; and with this view He has associated us with Christ in the place He takes as head over all, so that being associated with Him as heirs of God, joint-heirs with Christ, we have the inheritance with Him; that when He takes it we shall have it with Him; that, when He comes, we shall come with Him; that, whereas he was presented to the earth among the Jews, according to the promise of God, and they would not have Him, He then took another place, that of Son of Man, that place He will take in his resurrection and in His glory, and will raise us up to have it with Him when the time comes; and not we alone, but all saints will have it with Him; that we see not yet all things put under Him, but we do see Jesus crowned with glory and honor, and are waiting, as He is, till His enemies are made His footstool; that when that time comes—when it will be, nobody knows; God has not revealed it—the first thing He will do will be to have His body; He is not to be head without the body, but will catch us up to meet Him in the air; that, if dead, He will raise us, if alive He will change us, and take us up to meet the Lord in the air; that He will come and take us to His Father's house; that this is our place, and that he will have everything there in order for us—only He must have His heirs with Him; that He cannot take a step in entering on the possession of His inheritance, without having His heirs, His body, His bride with Him in the Revelation you first have the marriage of the Lamb, and then you see the Lamb coming out with His armies following Him. They are the bride—that is what they are—for the Lamb must have an associate with Him, a help-meet to share His inheritance. He has not yet taken to Himself His great power and reign. We see not yet all things put under Him. But when He comes He will take us up to be with Him, because we are perfectly associated with Him. When he appears, we shall appear with him. When He executes judgment, we shall accompany Him—that is, when He executes judgment on the world, breaking them with a rod of iron, and dashing them in pieces like a potter's vessel. That is anything but the blessedest part of our sharing His inheritance. The blessedest part is being with Him. But when He does appear, the world will see us with Him. He comes to raise the dead saints, and take them up to be with Himself, then when He appears we shall all appear with Him, and “shall bear” the image of the heavenly, as we have borne the image of the earthy.”

But meantime, while Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, He hath sent down the Holy Ghost to gather His heirs together. They must now carry the cross—when the kingdom comes, they will have the kingdom and the glory. But, until that time, while He is sitting at the right hand of God, His people must bear the cross, and it is only by the power of the Spirit of God that any one will follow him. Whatever glory He has, in the time of glory He associates us in it with Himself, and, as a consequence, we shall reign with Him—we who are now reconciled in Him. And when He comes again, He comes but not to judgment as regards us. “As it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment, so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, and unto them that look for him shall He appear the second time, without sin, unto salvation.”

And now, beloved friends, I would only ask, with whom are you associated? Are you associated with Christ, rejected by the world, and now sitting at the right hand of God? Are you by the Holy Ghost in spirit associated with Christ? or are you associated with the world which He is coming again to judge, and all His saints with Him? With which are you associated, while Christ is away, having been rejected, and says, Occupy till I come, having gone to receive a kingdom and a glory far better than that from which He was rejected? With whom are you associated? You have to go through the world, you must go through it; do you really believe that Satan is the prince and god of this world, which has rejected Christ, and do you really live as if you believed this? Do you believe that Christ sitteth at the right hand of God, and that He will come again to receive you to Himself, to share with Him the same blessings as Himself in His Father's house, and to witness His Father's glory and to share His love? Are we doing anything to recommend Him? Is there that in our hearts, which is like the confiding love of a child to his father, that which shows we are sons by adoption? Is there anything in us which identifies us with those who are the heirs of that blessedness and glory? The world knew Him not; the world knows us not. Can we say that! Are we like Him in our place in the world? When Christ was in the world, they saw no beauty in Him that they should desire Him. How is it with us? Is it the things that are not seen, or the things that are seen, that have power in our hearts? Christ is not seen; does He dwell in our hearts by faith, so as to be our portion? If He does, then when he appears, we shall appear with him in glory, and better than that, shall be taken up to be forever with Him. Lord, give us to be able to wait for Him, and to be ever saying, “Even so come, Lord Jesus.” May we have all our treasure, and heart, and portion, associated and identified with Himself. A little while, yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry. He only knows how long will last the gathering of the saints to be with Him.

Even So, Come, Lord Jesus.

IT is thirty years ago and more since I first saw the doctrine of the second coming of the Lord. I saw it as the only solution of a thousand and one difficulties which man's mind had created, by attempting to limit the predictions about a glorified Messiah down to the range and circumstances of earth, while in man's hand and responsibility. It threw heavenly hopes and promises open, and also gave consistency to God's past and future dealings with the earth.

I took it up energetically and whole heartedly what banner better for pilgrimage and conflict than coming glory?—I held it as a choice and chosen banner, and was ready to suffer and endure for the hope's sake, and did so.

Thirty years are past: and where am I now as to it? Well, I will speak the truth. Thirty years of wilderness and conflict have made a change, a great change. After the experience I have had of self, and circumstances, and of God, I should sum all up in these few words—It is a very different thing to have the coming of Christ as one's choice, one's own. Self-welcomed tomorrow, and to find oneself where all is ruined within and around—failure upon failure—but in the presence of the God who has chosen the return of His Son as the time when He means fully to introduce us into the glory. He has prepared for us, as for those of whom He has said, I will be merciful to whom I will be merciful, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. I have less movement in the feelings of joy and hope, more calmness of repose and anticipation, less thought about the contrast between the thing hoped for and the circumstances which are present, but more sense of the wonderfulness of God's ways, who should, through the second Adam, the Lord from heaven, have prepared such an end, in which many a sinner under Adam the first, and myself among the number, will find ourselves shortly caught up to be forever with the Lord, and in the Father's house. I trust that (in the weaning from self and circumstances in the wilderness, which I have in measure had) tastes, habits, ways, as well as affections and thoughts in accordance with those of the God of glory have been formed by Him in me. —W.

Extracts From Correspondence: Differences Between the Moral Activities of Society and the Church

The moral activities that are abroad are surely immense, and the pressure upon the social system of influences full of deceivableness, I suppose, is beyond all precedent. It is desirable to keep the soul increasingly alive to the fact that the path of the Church is a narrow and peculiar one. Even her virtues must have a peculiar material in them. Her common honesty, her good deeds, too, her secular labors, her fruitfulness, purity, and the like are to be peculiar in their functions and their springs. Her discipline does not act after the pattern of the mere moral sense of man. Society, as another has observed, would disclaim the offense contemplated in 1 Cor. 5; but society would never deal with it as the Church is there called to deal with it. Society, for instance, would never put covetousness or extortion in company with it, but the saint is instructed to do so. The moral sense of man would there make distinctions, when the pure element of the house of God resents all alike as unworthy of it.

This is “fine gold,” dear brother—gold refined again and again. Even the morals of the Church are to be of another quality from those of men. What sanctions are brought in 1 Cor. 5, 6 as to the common matters of life. If the saint be to abstain from fornication, it is because his body is a temple: if he be to refuse the judgment of others in the affairs of this life, in their most ordinary ways of right and wrong, of debit and credit, it is because he himself is destined to be a judge in the seat of the world to come, even from a throne of glory. Is not this “fine gold?” Does not such sanction make morals divine? What, in the world's morality, is like this? And I ask further, is not the need of this divine or peculiar agency to the effecting any moral results intimated in Luke 11:21-27? If it be not the stronger man possessing himself of the house, is anything done for God? If it be merely the unclean spirit going out, the end of the history of the house is, that it becomes more fitted for deeper evil. The emptied state, even accompanied by sweeping and ornamenting, is only a preparation for a worse condition, and nothing is done for God but when the stronger enters the house. No instrument of garnishing according to God, but Christ. And in the remembrance of these verses, dear brother, ask yourself what is doing in and for the house of Christendom at this moment. Is not many a broom, many a brush sweeping it and painting it? Is this making it God's house, or getting it ready to be the house of the full energy—the sevenfold energy—of the enemy.

Extracts From Correspondence: Keeping Pure in the Midst of Evil

Plenty of error is abroad, I doubt not, and that of all sorts, doing all kinds of mischief. May our hearts be pained when we think of it. But it is not for all of us, at least, to meddle with it in the way of exposure. To separate “the good into vessels,” the precious from the unclean mass, and nourish it with divine provisions may be a happier business.

I think we may learn that all forms of error have something of full-grown representatives in these last days. The infidel leaven will; (2 Peter 3:3, &c;) the loose, the morally relaxed condition of evangelical profession will; (2 Peter 2, and Jude;) religiousness, which leaves the soul exposed to the “deceivableness of unrighteousness,” will (2 Thess. 2) These, and others, will be in full strength, in the last days, that the judgment of God may meet them, as has been the way of divine judgments, in their day of full-blown fruits. In a general way I would put brethren in Christ in mind of all this, that they may keep themselves pure. But it is endless to follow the mind of man, as it is in this day of its peculiar activity, filling the scene with its fruit.

Ranke's history of the Popes of the 16th and 17th centuries is a remarkable witness (though perhaps not fully so intended to be by its author) of the present movement. We are witnessing a second regeneration of Catholicism, as Ranke says the close of the 16th century did. And this revival is destined, I judge, to set the woman on the beast, till the beast and his kings dethrone her to perfect their own form of apostasy, which the just Lord who judgeth righteously will visit in His day.

Great principles such as these are to be put before the saints, that their minds may be delivered from the perverted expectations of this generation. But this is to be done rather incidentally, more for the sake of the kingdom that lies beyond all this, than with the intent of acquainting the mind with these evils and apostate reprobate things themselves. A rejected Jesus is to be presented to the affections of the saints, and the coming glory is to be shown as that which suits Him as such a rejected One. J. G. B.

Ezekiel

JEREMIAH and Daniel, with the son of Buzi, were the great prophets of the captivity, as indeed they were in part contemporaries of one another, however they differed in their position and in the work which God gave each to do.

In Jeremiah we see a heart surcharged with grief, as he looked on the sin and misery and imminent judgment of the beloved people of God. Willing to plead that he was a child who could not speak, he is called to go to all that the Lord should send him, and to speak whatsoever He should command a prophet unto the nations, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build and to plant. Man—Jeremiah himself—would not have so ordered his path, for his was a timid spirit, which would gladly have retired into a lodging-place in the wilderness apart, and there have melted away in weeping for the daughter of his people. But God chose this man of tender sympathies to be the vessel of His terrible denunciations, and caused the one who interceded with the deepest feeling for Judah to know that all was in vain to stay the ruin. The iniquity was full, with less and less of heart to repent, and increasing rejection of God and His testimony, as he had to learn in his own sorrowful experience. Jerusalem, then, and David's house, having proved hopelessly wicked, nothing remained but judgment—a judgment which extends in principle to all nations. (Chap. 25) These nations are given into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, who should at the close be judged like the rest. Thus while Jeremiah exhorts to entire submission to the divine judgment, the destruction of Babylon is most fully and minutely declared. There is no account of the successive empires, as such, but solely of that one which God had raised up to set aside His own people and king, who had now become His worst dishonor, and the scandal of all the Gentiles. But the downfall of Jerusalem involved, that of the various independent nations, who revolved, in the ways of God, around that center. Jeremiah shows, accordingly, the rise of Babylon into its peculiar place, but also its fall, as the occasion of a deliverance of the captive people: the pledges of a vaster judgment, and of a more glorious restoration at the end of the age.

It was the lot of Daniel, while still assigning a singularly marked niche to Babylon, to develop, by the Holy Ghost, the whole course of the Gentile powers, “the times of the Gentiles,” who should, one after another, tread down Jerusalem. In other words, Daniel surveys the very serious and interesting parenthesis, during which God suspended His direct government of the earth, hitherto connected with David's house in Jerusalem, and retreating into His sovereignty, as God of heaven, committed universal power apart from His calling and presence, to Nebuchadnezzar and his successors. Of this momentous, but too little estimated, change, Daniel is the grand witness in the Old Testament. He fills up the interval during which God's proper and immediate governance of the earth ceases. There had been a feeble testimony to. His earthly government in Israel, which was set aside for a time by the Babylonish captivity. There will be the fulfillment of His rule when the last holder of the dominion, which was entrusted first to Nebuchadnezzar, shall fall under His judgment, God dealt with the world, not merely in providence, but through Israel, before the existence of the system symbolized by the statue of Dan. 2. He will deal with the world, after the extinction of this system by the little stone cut without hands. The intervening space is occupied with the rejection of Israel, and the contemporaneous supremacy of the imperial nations.

Evidently, therefore, the prophecy of Daniel fits into the space which is left open in the book of Ezekiel, who gives us most striking and instructive pictures of the state of things before and after the great image, but overleaps all between. Thus, at the beginning, we see that when the city, and even the sanctuary, became the scene of ungodliness and idolatry, Nebuchadnezzar takes Jerusalem, and the glory of God visits and abandons it. (Ezek. 1-11) At the end, (chap. 40-18) it is equally clear that the glory returns, never to depart from the land and people, as long as God has relations with the earth. Accordingly, all the rest of the Book bears out and confirms this first and prominent lesson, which no spiritual reader can fail to discern. There is a remarkably full display of the government of God here below, and this in Israel as His earthly center. The earlier half of the book is devoted chiefly to proving and rebuking the sin which necessitated the judgment, and so much the more because God was there as a governor. The latter part dwells rather upon His ways with Israel to restore them fully as His people, reveals the judgment of those nations who should venture to dispute His rights in connection with Israel, and predicts the establishment of the temple and all pertaining to it, as well as the final division of the land for the people, suitably to the glory of God and the rule of the true David.

Hence, in Ezekiel, you have no longer the man whose heart was broken, as he viewed the insensibility of God's people, not only to their exceeding sin, but to the yearnings of the Spirit over them, if peradventure they might yet repent. Our prophet sees the people thoroughly obdurate, so as to be no longer morally appealed to, no longer open even to rebuke. And therefore it is that in Ezekiel we find that the time is come to announce that the Lord could not act on the principles of His ancient dealings with Israel, and a new line of conduct is set forth. Individual conscience is appealed to; each must be judged according to his own ways. (Compare Ezek. 18, and 33) The condition of the individual before God is everything now that the nation is judged. And if judgment is threatened and executed. on all nations, beginning with Jerusalem, the object is that all may know the Lord—know Him by His vengeance, as Israel will also by the accomplishment of His word.

Another consequence that flows from the governmental aspect in which Israel and Jerusalem are looked at in Ezekiel is, that Christ's coming in humiliation is never spoken of there. His glory we have, but not His sufferings. Indeed, properly speaking, the second advent of Christ is not described any more than His first. The results of His presence, His judgments, His reigning in the midst of Israel, are prominent; but neither His cross nor His coming again in the clouds of heaven. Judgment of sin borne by the rejected Messiah is nowhere the thought, but the judicial dealing of the Lord with His people and the nations. A remnant is set apart and spared, and the reserve of God's sovereign grace is disclosed, whereby all is changed where all was lost, and He can and will restore His people and bless them according to all His heart, under the sway of the rightful king. “And my servant David shall be their prince forever.”

Again, from considering the diverse objects of these prophecies, we discover the true solution of their peculiarities. Thus, it is noticed by Dr. H. “that among the predictions against the enemies of the covenant people, we find none directed against Babylon.” But he adds an explanation which ought never to have proceeded from a Christian pen— “to what this is to be ascribed, it is difficult to imagine, except it arose from a desire not to give unnecessary offense to the government under which the prophet lived” (p. 9). Is it possible that one who writes thus can rightly hold that Ezekiel was inspired, and his writings the word of God? And, in the next place, if any prophet could have been supposed to be actuated by such motives, it was Daniel, who resided, not in the country only, but in the capital, nay, who stood in the palace of Babylon's most imperious king. Does he shrink from uttering the dirge of Babylon? The very contrary. In the second chapter he opens to the king fearlessly the true meaning of his dream, and in his interpretation- far from -weakening—he gives a very personal force to the head of the great image— “Thou art this head of gold;” and closes all with the declaration that an indestructible kingdom, set up by the God of heaven, should consume all these kingdoms, as the little stone was seen to break in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold. Still more pointed is chapter 4, where Daniel interprets for the king the dream which made Nebuchadnezzar afraid, and filled the prophet with mute astonishment for a short season. And no wonder. Yet did not the prophet shrink from explaining that it was he, Nebuchadnezzar himself, who for his pride of power was doomed to be the object of the most terrible humiliation which the Most High ever inflicted, though mercy was to triumph over judgment in the end. But, thirdly, the judicial scope of Ezekiel required him, under the guidance of the Spirit, to introduce the king of Babylon, not as the first of the bestial empires, (which was reserved for another prophet who predicted it under circumstances still more calculated to silence him, if human prudence ruled,) but as the servant of the Lord in executing judgment upon the apostate people of God, no less than the Gentiles. Ezekiel brings us up to the point when imperial supremacy was entrusted to the king of Babylon, but gives us neither the destruction of that city, nor much less the history and judgment of the imperial power. Jeremiah, in accordance with the Spirit's design by him, gives us the former, (chap. 1:51) Daniel gives us both with the utmost precision (chap. 2:35, 45; 5, 7:4). That is, Ezekiel gives us the preliminary struggles of the king of Egypt, who wished to be the great imperial head, but fell, as the Assyrian had already fallen, and Nebuchadnezzar received that place in the sovereign disposal of God. But having got there, Ezekiel stops, and again brings forward the ways of God with Israel, when He in the last days falls back on His grace, judges all their oppressors, and re-establishes them as His nation in holiness and glory before all the earth. Therefore it is that the end of his prophecy presents such a full view of God's final dealings with Israel and the Gentiles, the sanctification of His name in their midst, the proof of His grace, and the return of His glory to leads you to the brink of this bright era, and there he concludes, his subject being the course, character, and judgment of the great Gentile empires, as related to the Jews.

There is no reference, therefore, in this prophecy, to what is called “the spiritual kingdom,” as men so often deduce from chapter 17:22-24, or from the closing vision. Elsewhere are indications of mercy to the Gentiles, and that during Israel's temporary blindness, but they are foreign to the purpose of God in Ezekiel. Isaiah and Hosea furnished prophetic hints, of which the Holy Ghost, who inspired them, makes fruitful use, when the due time came, by the ministry of the apostle Paul. Here it is another character of events and visions and revelations, which have for their foundation God removing His government from Israel, and God re-establishing it there before all nations. All is fitly closed by the description of a sanctuary, its ritual, and other appurtenances, adapted to an earthly though regenerate people, to Israel on earth, and in no way, nor time, to the Church of the first-born which are written in heaven.

Dr. Henderson is “constrained to abide by the idea of a literal temple,” and so far is he right. “That it was the restoration of the material temple, then in ruins, that the prophet had in his eye, is the only hypothesis which fully meets the exigency of the case.” Indeed, one has only to read the comments of such as Gill, &c., to see how inevitably the so-called spiritual interpretation drives its advocates into plain and positive contradiction of the New Testament. For the priests are, in this scheme, made to represent Christian ministers! An idea more incompatible, not only with the true place of the believer and Christian ministry, but with the grace of God as now displayed in the gospel, can scarcely be imagined. This will serve to show how a false prophetic notion invariably tends, if systematically carried out, to overthrow the work or the person of Christ. All errors probably tend to the same point when confronted with the full light of God; but happily His mercy keeps His saints from working them out to their mature and deadly consequences.

Now, it is striking to observe how God has graciously guarded against this spurious spiritualism no less than against Dr. H.'s idea that it refers to what was restored after the return from the Babylonish captivity—a return, by the way, which Ezekiel does not notice.

For most important changes are here anticipated, embracing things sacred and political. The divisions of the land among the twelve tribes did not differ more from the ancient arrangement, than did the predicted temple, sacrifices, feasts, &c., from the previous order of Moses and of David. That the feeble remnant under Ezra and Nehemiah rebuilt the city and the sanctuary, according to this pattern, and conformed to these predicted innovations, is contrary to all the evidence of scripture which we possess; and we have ample light upon the restoration, both in a civil and in a religious point of view. The gathering of Israel knew too well, had not taken place; nor had the gracious work of God in cleansing and renewing them been yet accomplished, much less had the earthly blessings of the kingdom been vouchsafed. (Ezek. 36) The dry bones were still unquickened; Ephraim and Judah were as far apart as ever. (Ezek. 37) Nor had the last Gentile foe, Gog, made his appearance on the mountains of Israel. (Ezek. 38; 39) There was no pretense to parcel out the land as Ezekiel prescribed, nor to build a temple according to his magnificent scale. It was a day of small things and the ancient men that had seen the former house wept, when the foundation of the post-captivity temple was laid before their eyes. But among the people who shouted for joy, not one, we presume, fell into so great mistake as Dr. H. Who of these Jews, untaught and unspiritual as most were, could have thought that they who had mercy extended to them in the sight of the Persian kings, to set up the house of God and its desolations, and to have a wall in Judah and Jerusalem, were beholding a temple, whose earthly grandeur was to transcend the house of Solomon, far more than the house which he built outshone the lowly tabernacle of the wilderness?

On the other hand, we agree with Dr. H. that a matter-of-fact sanctuary is meant. The more a reader “studies it, and the more he enters into the minutiae, with the greater force does the conviction rivet itself in his mind Talk to him about spiritual and mystical meanings, you puzzle and bewilder him. He may admire your ingenuity, and be brought to be half inclined to embrace your theory, but he cannot, after all, rid himself of the notion of a material building and literal ordinances” (p. 189). This is true, and cannot be got rid of by the mysticists. But it is more important to observe that, in the feasts, Pentecost or the feast of weeks has no place. This fact, and it is not the only one of the sort, destroys the notion that the present dispensation was meant. For notoriously that feast is, above all others, the type of the Christian position, which is founded on the death and resurrection of Christ, and characterized by the presence of the Spirit. Doubtless, in the millennium, the Spirit will be poured out on all flesh. Still however blessed a privilege that may be, the presence of Christ the king is much more distinctively what marks the age to come—the answer of glory to the sufferings of the Messiah. Accordingly, as the millennial age is here meant, we have the indispensable Passover and the Tabernacles then fulfilled; but no Pentecost—an absence most unaccountable, if the bearing were to foreshadow the place and privilege of the Church now, but perfectly natural if the future and earthly reign of Christ were intended.

There are many to whom the idea of a material temple, of earthly priesthood, and literal sacrifices, bloody and unbloody, is repulsive, and this not only in the abstract, but because each and all seem opposed to the letter and the spirit of the Epistle to the Hebrews. But these Christians forget that that epistle addresses the “partakers of the heavenly calling,” and supposes persons in separation from the mass of the Jewish nation. Suffering on earth, and in relation with Christ on high, in no way applies to the state of things which Ezekiel takes for granted; for there it is Israel, as such who are brought into blessing on earth, reigned over by their long-expected king, and their every foe judged, so as to sanctify and make known Jehovah to all the earth.

Nor is it just to say that such a restitution of earthly rites, &c., is to retrogade. It would be so if men compare the Church's portion, even now, with that of millennial Israel or the Gentiles; but such a comparison is unfair. Rightly viewed, there is decided and most blessed progress in the ways of God. We have had Israel tried and found wanting. We have the Church proved, and still proving itself, just as unfaithful to its high calling and responsibilities. The millennium will be the manifestation of God's kingdom, in both its parts, “earthly things,” as well as “heavenly.” And what advance more precious or conspicuous The Church, which had failed here below, will be displayed in unfailing glory above; and Israel, hitherto so rebellious, shall be called the holy people, the redeemed of the Lord, their city no longer forsaken, nor their land desolate. Thus it is a partial view which creates the difficulty. Divine revelation, as a whole, preserves the earthly people and the heavenly Church in their due spheres, without confusion; and shows that in the age to come there will be no more retrogression than in God's past dispensations. For us, no doubt, it would be going back, but not for Israel. The will then offer intelligently that which sets forth the work of their Messiah.

In a word, then, faith leaves room for all the words of God, and waits on the Spirit for wisdom in applying them. The tendency of Popery has ever been to find in the Christian Church the accomplishment of such prophecies of earthly glory, as are found in Isaiah, Ezekiel, &c. And Popery is in this more consistent than Protestantism; for Popery regards Christianity as an elongation of, and improvement on, the Jewish economy, and finds an earthly high priest, priests, Levites, temple, sacrifices, fasts, feasts, &c., answering, to those of the Mosaic system. Protestantism discards all these in profession, if not in practice; but as it in general denies the future and distinctive place of Israel, it arrogates to itself that coveted prize of earthly exaltation, and is thus forced to adopt the mystical principle of interpretation. If not, it falls back on the strange praeterism of Dr. H, which can only see in Gog the past history of Antiochus Epiphanes, and in the glowing pictures of the sanctuary and the land and city the prefiguring of what was done under Ezra and Nehemiah. It is clear that such exposition exposes the word of God to the charge of the grossest exaggeration, and helps on the growing incredulity of these last days. To faith it makes little difference whether God speaks of the past or of the future: the believer cordially accepts all He says and loves to look for a bright morrow.

A Fair Show in the Flesh

“The truth,” or the doctrine of the Son, as the Lord Himself teaches us, (John 8:32-36,) sets free all those who receive it. It is the “law of liberty;” (James 1, 2) it is “mercy rejoicing over judgment;” for judgment has been duly and fully marked against us, as guilty but through the blood of sprinkling, mercy is secured, and by the gospel that mercy is published; so that the truth the doctrine of the Son, the gospel, or the law of liberty, which are all titles of the same revelation of God—sets the sinner free. In this precious liberty is included freedom from sin, from the law, and from the flesh. This is the excellent and wondrous teaching of Rom. 6; 7:8 Sin had been a master. But the believer in Jesus is dead in Jesus; and death being the end or wages of sin, sin is gone. “He that is dead is freed (justified) from sin.” Sin has no claim on him. He is no longer to be its servant; for by death the entire connection between him and sin is dissolved. So is the believer freed from the law; for the law addresses itself only to living man. It is the husband only of such, by its energies working on the flesh. But the believer being not a living, but a dead and risen, man—a man in union with a dead and risen Christ—the law is of necessity discharged as an old husband, and the believer is acted upon by the virtues of the risen Christ, the new husband. So also is the believer out of the flesh. The flesh is the living man, man in his nature, as derived from corrupted Adam. But the believer is not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, and the Spirit of God dwells in him. (Rom. 8) He is in the new man in the second Adam; he is in Christ, and being one with Him, he is spirit—for he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit. (1 Cor. 6:17)

These are the three blessed characteristics of the believer's liberty, as we are taught in these three glorious chapters. This is the standing of the “man in Christ.” The truth has made him free, the Son has made him free; and this has been accomplished by taking him out of himself, and planting him, through faith, in the dead and risen Christ of God. Sin has no claim to his service, as a lord; the law has no power over him, as a husband; nor is the flesh the condition in which he is.

But this doctrine, which is Christianity, does not suit the legal, fleshly mind of man. Above all the difficulty which Paul had to meet in his care of the churches, that which arose from our disposedness to return to the law, or to “confidence in the flesh,” was the most frequent and the greatest.

In Galatia he found this abundantly. The church there had been eminent for attachment to him, because of the gospel which he preached. They had received him as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus, and would have plucked out their eyes for him. They had been in a particularly blessed state of soul; they had begun in the “Spirit,” in the doctrine of faith; and this devotedness of heart to the apostle who had brought them that doctrine, was the fruit of it. But they had been “bewitched.” They had been drawn back from their place in Christ, and were in bondage again. Instead of being dead to the old husband, they had re-embraced him, and were deriving influence out of him once more. Not that they had formally renounced Christ, as Jews or Pagans. They still professed Christ, but together with Him, they were insisting on, and trusting in, “days, and months and times, and years.” They were teaching for doctrines the commandments of doubt that it is Israel and the forces will be men. They were re-enacting ordinances; they were turning again to beggarly elements. A life of simple faith in the Son of God, as the one who had loved them and given Himself for them, was defiled; and they were living to the law, putting themselves under observances, as under so many tutors and governors. They were servants and not sons—in bondage, and not in liberty; they had gone back to the schoolmaster, which they could not do without leaving the Father's house.

All this must have been connected with an increasing show of religion among them. This necessarily was the case; for “days and months” were so increasingly observed, the bonds of the law and of carnal ordinances were so multiplied, that to an eye not instructed by the Spirit, they must have had a great “name to live.” But Paul speaks of all this as “leaven,” threatening to corrupt the whole mass. In his view it was the symptom of death, and not of life. “A fair show” it was; but it was a fair show “in the flesh.” Thus, under his eye, it was the garnishing of a sepulcher, and his energy is employed in re-quickening them. He travails in birth again with them, if haply they might be raised out of this sepulcher, or place of death, and brought forth, as Isaac from Sarah's dead womb, by the precious ministry of the truth—that is, the doctrine of the Son taught by the Spirit.

This epistle is a word of solemn admonition. It shows us that the most promising may be beguiled, so that all have to watch, We may have the blessed assurance of our holy keeping; but we none of us keep the book of life, Therefore we can only say of one another, “if ye continue in the faith, grounded and settled.” And this epistle shows that we may be disappointed even in the most promising—in a Galatian disciple; but it also shows us that the Spirit of God is alive, most sensitively alive, to the least infraction of the truth, or “the law of liberty.” He speaks of it as He speaks of some of the foulest moral stains that could defile the garments of the saints both are the leaven that leavens the whole lump (1 Cor. 5:6; Gal. 5:9).

But it is to be observed still further, as to the nature of this leaven that was working in Galatia, that it was not the revival of a hope, under what is termed the moral law of the ten commandments, as though by strict moral obedience a righteousness could be produced. This was not the gross thought of the disciples there; but they were returning to observances and ordinances. It was a more refined and religious confidence in the flesh, but still it was confidence in the flesh. They had begun in the Spirit, with Christ's sufficiency; but now they were looking for perfection from and in the flesh. It was a departure from the liberty in which Christ, by His death and resurrection, had put them; and the apostle clearly treats them as a people whose condition made him to stand in doubt of them, and to feel towards them as though he must begin his toil among them afresh, and travail in birth again till Christ be formed in them, till all fleshly confidence should depart from their hearts, and Christ and His liberty—Christ and the virtue of His death and resurrection, Christ and His completeness for the poor sinner—be welcomed and received there alone.

All at Galatia was as death while the flesh, and its observances, and its righteousness, were thus confided in. A sepulcher it was, garnished by much religious drapery; but the apostle was not to be deceived by such fair show; he lays it bare; he takes off the trappings to exhibit the corruption that was under them: for it was the flesh that was under them, and the flesh is a dead thing. They might ornament the flesh, but it is all uncleanness; and deck it out as we may, it is the flesh still, in which there dwelleth “no good thing.” The days, and months, and times, and years, religiously enforced as they were, and fitted to give their votaries a name to live with those who judge after the flesh, were but a painted sepulcher to the eye of Paul.

Indeed God is not truly known where such things are trusted. If the living, blessed God be really before the soul, He is known as one who quickens the dead; but confidence in the flesh, such as existed among the Galatians, gives up God. Thus the apostle has to say, “howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service to them which by nature are no gods; but now after that ye have known God (or rather are known of God), how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, wherein ye desire again to be in bondage?” For, indeed, as we may infer from what he says in Gal. 2:19, the only way to be alive to God is to be dead to the law. Truly blessed this is. As long as the soul is alive to the law—as long as it derives the motions and sanctions which influence it from the law, it is dead to God. For self is its end and object: to take care of one's self, of one's own interest and safety is its purpose. God is not lived for; His glory and service are not the aim of the soul; that cannot be because the law is set up, and the law puts us upon caring for ourselves—upon the anxious, uneasy, servile question of our own interest and safety. This is shown in the person of the unprofitable servant.

He was under the law. All that he cared about was to come off well in the day of reckoning. He treated the Lord as an austere man who must be satisfied. He feared him, not having learned that way of “perfect love” which is His, and which casts out fear; and thus he was alive to the law, but dead to God. Paul, however, stood in another mind. “I,” he says, “through the law, am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.” But from this life the Galatians had now been “bewitched.” They had begun it, but they were now deserting it, and no time was to be lost, if haply the apostle might now call them back to Christ, or to that “faith” which works by love, setting the heart and conscience at liberty before God, so that He may be loved. They had to be learned again that nothing availed but “a new creature;” (Gal. 6); that before God the flesh is gone, sin judged, and the law taken out of the way; that the old master of Rom. 6 is no longer in power, and that we are become dead to the old husband of Rom. 7; but that by faith in a dead and risen Christ, we have escaped from these bonds and penalties, to find our liberty in the fullness of Christ.

But if the standing in the “righteousness by faith” be given up, and “confidence in the flesh” be adopted, then there is both a fall from grace, and debtorship to do the whole law (Gal. 5:1-5). Christ will not share the confidence of our souls with the law. He is a jealous husband, even as God is a jealous God. And we may bless Him that He is; we may bless Him that He will have us as a chaste virgin, with mind kept uncorrupted in His simplicity. If we return to the law, whether ceremonial or moral, we are debtors to the whole of it. We are to glory in the cross of Christ, whereby the world is crucified unto us, and we unto the world (Gal. 6:14). We are not, by subjection to ordinances, to manifest that we are still living in the world (Col. 2:20). The cross has met everything for us. It has honored the rights and demands of God. It has answered and silenced the malice of the enemy. And in spirit we have been carried on high, in and with Jesus, beyond the voice of the law; for that spoke for God on earth and we are above the earth, in the heavens, with the ascended Christ (Eph. 2:6). This being so, we are called to leave the world, and all thoughts of sanctification in the flesh, remembering that it is with nothing else than with the “increase of God” that we are nourished. (Col. 2:19.) What words! but not too great; for our life is hid in God, and therefore partakes of its proper, divine nourishment. It is not we that live, but Christ that lives in us. All this truth was so precious to Paul, that the teaching of those who were reviving the law, or bondage to ordinances, was especially his sorrow; and as such had leavened the churches in Galatia more than any other, his most aggrieved letter is to them. It was the jealous care of the apostle to keep the doctrines of unsullied Christianity in full purity, and to spread the savor of them through the hearts of the elect. And this doctrine of Christ tells us that man is utterly worthless—that he has been touched again and again by the finger of God, and been found to be an instrument entirely out of tune, having no music for Him at all. Man is, accordingly, in the boundlessness of divine grace, laid aside, and Christ is taken up, risen from the dead, as the head of a new creation. Believers are God's workmanship in Christ Jesus. Christ is formed in them. They are born of God, and His seed remains in them—that incorruptible seed of the word of the gospel. They are a new creation, of which Christ is both the head and the character. He is in them, and they are in Him. It is not they who live, but Christ liveth in them. They are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, as has been before said, but to write again these precious truths is safe and pleasant. The believer is in Christ, and not in himself, and thus he has done with condemnation as much as Christ has. Christ was once condemned; He died unto sin once; but now He dieth no more, death has no more dominion over Him. And so with the believer who is in Him: “There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.”

All this is for the effectual relief of the conscience, to give it perfect rest. But in the doctrine of Christ there is much more. It may be expressed thus, in mind, body, and ESTATE, believers are one with Jesus. How divine the love that could take such a counsel! The poor soul that believes is one with Christ in spirit now, and is to be one with Him in body and in inheritance by and by. He that is joined to the Lord is already “one spirit” with Him; and the present vile body is to be hereafter changed into the likeness of “his glorious body;” and further still, we are “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ;” for in Him and with Him we have obtained an inheritance. Thus are believers “conformed to the image of the Son.” In mind, body, and estate they are one with Him Great features of the precious mystery of Christ these are; and, shall I say, still more marvelous is it, that the same love which rests on the Son rests on them. (John 17:23.)

Thoughts quite beyond any but the mind of the Spirit open to us in all this. But while tracing the mystic oneness of Christ, we are to remember the teaching of scripture, that Jesus is the Sanctifier, and believers but the sanctified (Heb. 2). And this shows that notwithstanding the existence of this oneness, yet the proper personal distance between Him and us originally was as great as light from darkness, as heaven from hell, as God Himself from sin. And we are also to remember that by His blood alone are we called into this condition. The blood is our only title, though the things to which it entitles us are thus immeasurable. Now all this glorious mystery is soiled and clouded by those who taught circumcision or the law of commandments contained in ordinances. No wonder, then, that our apostle so withstood them; for such doctrine revives the flesh—revives man in himself; and that is destructive of the first element in pure, unmixed, Christianity. It builds again that which has been destroyed; it rakes among old ruins; it seeks the living among the dead; it busies itself in clothing a carcass; it is not in any wise a fellow-laborer with the Spirit, for it is dealing with man and not with Christ; it is of the world; for the apostle, in the strong language already referred to in Col. 2:20, challenges subjection to ordinances as a living in the world, and as unsuited to one that is dead and risen with Christ.

No wonder, then, that the apostle sets himself so zealously to the service of teaching the saints the great mystery, so bright and full as it is of the glory of God; and also to the service of gainsaying the leaven of the “teachers of the law,” so destructive is it of glory. If he prized the grace of God in its purity and fullness, if he prized the liberty of the souls of the saints, if he valued the blood and work of Jesus, he must set himself to these services; he must withstand the pretensions of the flesh, wherever he met them, and spread among the saints the light and savor of this mystery of Christ. And so we find he did according to the working of God which wrought in him effectually. It was his jealously lest that doctrine should be tainted; it was his delight and desire that that doctrine should be known. For the flesh, with all that it had, and all it could glory in, whether its wisdom, strength, or religion, he had left to perish in its own corruption.

And in closing, let us ask, what will commonly be found in this enacting of days, and months, and times, and years—in this reviving of ordinances, and of the rudiments of the world? In those who impose them, there has been of old the design of fastening their own bonds round the hearts of their votaries; in those who adopt them, there is generally the blindness of the mere natural mind: but at times these things are the fruit of growing worldliness in professors. This “doing, doing,” in religious observances is the miserable substitute for the walk of faith and communion with God in the Spirit. The world that crucified Jesus is not heartily renounced, nor is Jesus Himself heartily embraced. The sweet savor of His name is departing, the freshness of His presence is fading, and the conscience, unsettled by this, seeks relief in the increased religiousness of the fleshly mind. The dark, cold heart, as it recedes from Christ, loses the vigorous, happy, genial sense, and puts on ornaments to hide from itself the growing feebleness of old age. It is well if they do not prove the very funeral trappings of a dead body. The heart knows its own wretched ways and deceits too well not to be able to speak of these things. Would that we were more simple concerning such evil. But Christ in His sufficiency is only the more prized and the more clung to as either one's soul is tempted this way, or as one's eye and ear understand that this way is growing in a generation of large and corrupted profession.

Faith and Its Fruits: Poetry

Where'er the patriarch pitched his tent,

He built an altar to His God;

And sanctified, where'er he went,

With faith and prayer, the ground he trod.

Through all the east for riches famed,

(Heaven's gifts) he set his heart on none;

Nor when the dearest was reclaimed,

Withheld his son, his only son.

Wherefore in blessing he was blest;

Friendless, the friend of God became;

Long wandering, everywhere found rest;

Long childless, nations bear his name.

Nor nations born of blood alone;

The father of the faithful he,

Where'er his promised seed is known,

Faith's heirs are his posterity.

My God, if called like him to roam,

Glad may I all for thee forsake;

My God, what thou hast made my home,

Let me thy sanctuary make.

Thy law, thy love, be my delight,

Whate'er I do, or think, or am,

Walking by faith, and not by sight,

Like a true child of Abraham.

-JAMES MONTGOMERY.

Faith's Resting Place

If my soul rests entirely on the work of Christ and His acceptance, as the One who appears in the presence of God for me, that is a finished work, and a perfect infinite acceptance.” “As He is, so are we in this world,” so that herein is love with us made perfect, that we should have boldness in the day of judgment. Now what men substitute for this is the examination of the effects of the Spirit in me.

The effects of regeneration are put as the ground of rest in lieu of redemption; whence I sometimes hope when I see those effects, sometimes despair when I see the flesh working. Having put the work of the Spirit in the place of the work of Christ, the confidence I am commanded to hold fast never exists, and I doubt whether I am in the faith at all. All this results from substituting the work of the Spirit in me for the work, victory, resurrection, and ascension of Christ actually accomplished—the sure, because finished resting-place of faith, which never alters, never varies, and is always the same before God. The discovery of sin in you, hateful and detestable as it is, is no ground for doubting; because it was by reason of this, to atone for this, because you were this, that Christ died; and Christ is risen, and there is an end of that question.

Faith's Resting Place

“MY GROANING.” (Psa. 38:9). A groan to God, however deep the misery, however prostrate the spirit, however unconscious that we are heard, is always received above as the intercession of the Spirit, and answered according to the perfectness of God's purpose concerning us in Christ. Therefore the charge is, “They have not cried unto me with their heart, when they howled upon their beds.” There is no consequence of sin which is beyond the reach of this groaning to God, nothing but the self-will which will not groan to Him at all. This is a blessed thought! Such is our intercourse with God in joy and in sorrow; and I doubt not that in us poor blessed creatures, the truest, the most blessed (what will shine most when all things shine before God), are these groans to Him; they cannot, indeed, be in their fullness but where the knowledge of the glory of blessing is. I can see them precede the greatest works and words of Jesus. The sense of the wilderness, taken into His heart, made but the streams which could refresh it flow forth in the sympathy of the Spirit which it called forth; and now the Spirit is IN US.

The Basket of First-Fruits

Q. Deut. 26 M. F. asks, whether the basket of first-fruits is limited to the entrance of Israel into the land, or whether it was a repeated and constant oblation? also, wherein it is verified in believers now?

A. That it applies to Israel's possession of the land at any time is plain. The last words of the first verse imply as much: “And it shall be when thou art come in unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, and possessest it, and dwellest therein, that thou shalt take,” &c. Ex. 23:19; Lev. 23; and Num. 18:13, fully confirm this. It was a standing ordinance in the land. The spirit of the offering is also clear—a full profession before God that they possessed the things which He had promised to their fathers. Their father had been a Syrian ready to perish, a slave in Egypt; and redemption had brought them out thence, and into the good land of which they were now in full enjoyment. Therefore were they come up to own the Giver, in offering to Him the first-fruits. They worshipped and rejoiced in every good thing the Lord had given them, and this in grace, with the Levite and the stranger. How all this bears on the way in which the believer now makes the offering is evident. All his worship is but the answer, the reflex, and bringing back to God of the fruit—the first-fruits, if true faith and godliness be there, of what God has revealed Himself to be to him, and of that heavenly joy into which He has introduced him. Such is properly what the Lord calls “that which is your own;” for on the earth we are pilgrims, in the desert it is not “ours.” The characteristic of piety will be found to be, in scripture, and everywhere, and ever, that the first effect of blessing is turning back to God and owing it there, not the personal enjoyment of it, which, without this, turns us from God. The love that gave it is more present than even the gift. See Eliezer at the well (Gen. 24), the cleansed Samaritan leper (Luke 17), and a multitude of other examples. He who gives is more and more before us than the gift itself. This is the elevating character of divine enjoyment. Then surely we do enjoy it, freely and blessedly, and the stream of grace flows out to the Levite and the stranger—to those whose hearts are in need, and who have not an inheritance in the land we enjoy. It is, then, the return of the heart to God in the enjoyment of the heavenly blessings which are the fruit of redemption. The Christian too can enjoy or so worship when he has the consciousness that heavenly things are his. It is the profession, the open avowal of this; if he has not this consciousness, neither can he bring his basket of first-fruits. “A Syrian ready to perish” was a thing past. The worship was grounded on possession of the blessing and on a known inheritance—type of “sitting in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” It is not thankfulness for promises, however surely that has its place, but thankfulness that they are accomplished—in Christ, yea and amen. Redemption is owned as an accomplished thing that has put us in possession, though for the redemption of the body we have yet to wait.

Indeed, this is the general character of Deuteronomy. It is not drawing near to God in the sanctuary by means of sacrifice, but the people—not the priest merely for them—are themselves in possession, and hence the sentiments towards God Himself, and towards the desolate of men, in the enjoyment of the blessing; for free grace becomes him who has received all through grace. Compare Deut. 16 where even the various degrees of this are traced in the three principal feasts of the Lord. Hence also the responsibility of the people as to the continuance of the enjoyment of the blessing; for it is in the path of obedience that such enjoyment is known. Deuteronomy is a book of the deepest practical instruction in this respect.

Notes of a Lecture on First Thessalonians 1

What I would desire to bring before you is, the coming of the Lord as the proper hope of the Church, and to show you that it is constantly, increasingly brought before it as such by the Spirit of God. When once the foundation is laid of His first coming as that which brings personally peace and salvation, and even before it, so far as it is a means of awakening the conscience, the one thing the saints were taught to look for was the coming of the Lord. No doubt the first thing the soul needs to know is the ground of its salvation. When this is known, the Lord Himself becomes precious to the believer, and when the Church was in a healthy state, we shall find that the hearts of the saints were altogether set upon Him, and looking for His coming. And now our hearts should understand (as I shall show you from Scripture was the case then) that the coming of Christ is not some strange speculation, or the advanced idea of a few, but was set before the Church as elementary and foundation truth, and formed a part of all their habits and feelings, and mingled itself with every thought. It was and is the keystone of all that keeps up the heart in this solitary place (looking at it as journeying through the wilderness), and with a heart full of love for God, and the desire to see Christ, we can appreciate the Apostle's prayer for us— “The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ.” We have not long to wait, and it is worth being patient for.

We shall find, too, that the teaching of Scripture as to Christ's second coming casts wonderful light on the value of His first coming For His second coming, as it concerns the saints, is to complete as regards their bodies, so bringing them into the full result of salvation, that work of life-giving power Christ has already wrought in their souls, founded on the complete title in righteousness which He has effected for them on the cross. He comes to receive them to Himself that where He is there they may be also, to change their vile bodies and fashion them like His glorious body. For the saints the resurrection is a resurrection of life, not of judgment. It is a raising in glory, or changing into it by the Lord's power, those that are already quickened and justified. When people, Christian people too, are looking for judgment, and saying with Martha, “I know he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day,” they forget the judgment of the quick; that, then, is the judgment of this world: they are to be all caught eating and drinking. “Sudden destruction cometh upon them as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape. People do not like that. They put off God's judgment to a vague and indefinite period, when they hope all will be well. They think that then will be decided their final state, they trust, for blessing. There is surely a judgment; but all their thoughts about it are a mistake. The matter is decided now. “He that believeth is not condemned, and he that believeth not is condemned already.”

If we receive the statements of Scripture, all is as simple as possible—that the first coming of Christ to do His Father's will was so complete in its efficacy that they who belong to that first coming, who have part in its efficacy by faith, are cleansed, justified, forgiven by its virtue; and that when He comes the second time, He comes to bring them to glory. The moment I get hold of the truth that the coming is, for believers, to receive them to Himself, the moment I see that His coming the second time is to bring in the glory, to change us into His own likeness and to have us with Him, it affects everything, instead of being an unimportant thing.

I believe death is the most blessed thing that can happen to a Christian; but it is not the thing I am looking for. I am looking to see Him. He might come tomorrow, or tonight or now. Do you not think it would spoil all your plans? Suppose you thought He might come, would it not make a difference in your thoughts'? You know it would. Suppose a wife expects her husband to return from a journey, do you not think there would be an effort to have everything ready?

Another thing I have found to be specially blessed is, that it connects me with Christ so nearly that I do not think merely of going to heaven and being happy—a vague thought this. Of course, I shall be perfectly happy: surely we shall. The divine presence will shed sure and endless blessing around. But one is coming whom I know, who loves me, who has given Himself for me, whom I have learned to love; and I shall be with Him forever. Christ becomes personally more in view, more the object of our thoughts. Nothing is so powerful as scripture for everything It deals with the soul in the power of divine light. It reveals Christ, bringing the heart's judgment into His presence. It convicts every thought of the heart, showing what it is in truth.

There are three ways in which Christ is pointed to in Scripture: on the cross at His first coming; He is sitting on the right hand of God; and He is coming again. In the first He has laid the foundation of that which I have in Him. The foundation was on the cross, and now that He is sitting on the right hand of God, He has sent us the Holy Ghost the Comforter while awaiting His return, giving to those in whom He dwells the full certainty of faith as to the efficacy of His work and their own redemption. God's love and their own adoption thus lead them to desire with ardent hope His coming again.

Having thus given a general idea of the place Christ's coming holds in Scripture, I will take a few passages in different parts of the word, without going fully into them now, to show that it is the great truth of Scripture hope, and that all the thoughts, feelings, hopes, interests of God's children are connected with it—that not only it is not a false, but that it is not a rare or strange idea, but enters into the whole structure of Christian feeling.

Thus 1 Thess. 1:9, 10 “For they themselves show of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God: and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.” Here we find that the world was talking about this expectation of the Christians: so sure was their expectation and so strong the influence which it exercised on their conduct. They (the disciples) were looking for God's Son from heaven: it formed a part of that which the heathen were converted to, the present waiting for God's Son from heaven, so that the world took notice of it. In chap. 2:18, 19, “For what is our hope, our joy, or crown of rejoicing?” Most beautiful here to see the affection of Paul for the saints; but to what did his heart look as the time when these affections would be satisfied in their blessing? The coming of Christ, Again, as regards holiness, we see exactly the same thing in chap. 3:12, 13, “And the Lord make you increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you: to the end he may establish y our hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints:” The coming of Christ, and His coming with all the saints so that it can confer but one thing, was so near to his spirit that he looks at their being found perfect then, as the object his heart desired. And in chap. 4:13, 18, “But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.” We find that, instead of the Lord's coming being a strange doctrine, while he could not look for the Christian's dying without his going to heaven, yet the comfort he gives is not that but their return with Jesus. Death did not deprive them of this; God would have them with Him.

First note, beloved friends, the full assurance expressed here for living and dead saints alike. How do people persist in saying it is impossible to tell on this side the grave? The apostle does tell for both. The first coming of Christ has so finished redemption and the putting away of sin, that His second is glory and being with Him for the dead and living saints. But see how present the coming of the Lord was to their minds. If I were to comfort the friends of a departed saint by saying that God would bring him with Jesus when He came again, what would they think of me? That I was mad or wild. Yet such is the comfort Paul gives to the Thessalonians and no other, though he plainly teaches elsewhere that the soul of the saint will go to heaven when he dies.

But these examples show how the coming of the Lord mixed itself with every thought and feeling of Christianity then. So in his wish for Christians in chap. 5:23, “The very God of heaven sanctify you wholly, and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” But the world rejects this news, and the church becomes worldly has lost her value for it. Not so the first disciples; their hearts were attached to their Master and they desired to see Him to be like Him. They waited as a present condition of soul for God's Son from Heaven. I have gone through these passages not merely to prove the doctrine but to show the way in which it connected itself with the whole of the Christian's life.

We will turn back now to see the universal testimony of Scripture to the truth of this doctrine and the various aspects it takes; and first, Matt. 24:30, 31, “And then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory, and He shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.” When the disciples ask Him the time when these things are to be, He tells them to watch; and in verse 44, “Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh.” But the Lord goes farther in the following parables which apply to Christians. The mark of the evil servant given there is that he says in his heart my lord delays his coming, and thereupon begins to eat and drink with the drunken. They lost the expectation of the church and sank down into hierarchical power and into the world, into comfort and pleasure. But the bridegroom did tarry, and the church lost the present expectation of Christ and the blessed fruit of it on their souls. Matt. 25:1, “Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.” There is the essence of the church's calling. They went forth, but while the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept, saints as well as professors no exception. They all lost the sense of what they had gone out to, and gave up watching. And what is it that aroused them from the sleepy state into which they had fallen? “And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh: go ye out to meet him,” verse 6. They had to be called out again; they had got into the world, into some place to sleep more comfortably, just where the professing church is now, eating and drinking with the drunken, and the cry is, I trust, again going forth, “Behold, the bridegroom cometh.” And what made the church depart from the sense of what they had been called out to was saying (just what people, and Christian, people too, are saying now) “The Lord delayeth, His coming.” They do not say He will not come, but He delays it; we are not to expect Him.

I will pass over Mark, not that there are not plenty of passages there, but that what we find there is substantially the same as what we find in Matt. 1 will go on therefore to Luke 12:35-38, “Let your loins be girded about, and your lamps burning; and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord, when he will return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately. Blessed are those servants, whom the Lord when he cometh shall find watching; verily, I say unto you, that he shall gird himself and make them sit down to meat, and will come forth to serve them. And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third, and find them so, blessed are those servants.” Remark here that the waiting for the coming of Christ is what characterizes the Christian according to the mind of Christ. Men speak of death, but death is not my Lord.

We find the same truth pressed on men in Luke chapter 17, verses 22-37, where this passage does not warn people as to sin, but as to the unholy thought that the world may go on indefinitely. As soon as Noah entered into the ark, the flood came and destroyed them all. As soon as the Church is taken up, Satan having filled men's hearts with lies, judgment will come. And as in the days of Noah and of Lot, they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, planted and builded, even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed. Remark here how impossible it is to apply this to the great white throne. When He sits on the great white throne, the heavens and the earth flee away; there is a total destruction of everything. Men will not be eating, drinking, planting, building then. Look now at chap. 21:26 to 36. People apply this to the destruction of Jerusalem, but this is spoken of in verse 25 of this chapter: “Then let them which are in Jerusalem flee to the mountains and let them which are in the midst of it depart out: and let not them that are in the countries enter there into.” But then, after that, Jerusalem is trodden down of the Gentiles till the time of the Gentiles be fulfilled (the time running on now till the last beast's wickedness is filled up). Then come the signs and the Son of Man is revealed.

John 14:1, 2, 3. “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me; in my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so I would have told you, I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also.” Such is the promise left us the comfort Christ gave to His disciples when He was leaving them: He comes to receive them to Himself.

Acts 1:9, 10, 11. “And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; which also said, ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.” This too, though it be Christ coming in the clouds, is not the great white throne: but what is striking here is, they are losing Christ, and what is the angels' word to them? Why are ye looking up into heaven? He will come again in the same way. What the angels brought before them to comfort them, when Jesus left them, was that He would come again; and that to which scripture points people's hearts, to comfort and strengthen them, is that He is coming again.

It is appointed unto man once to die and after that the judgment. That is the allotted portion of the seed of the first Adam; but as that is man's portion, so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, and to them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation (Heb. 9:27, 28). And Christ is waiting only till the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. We are not even all to die. We shall not all die, 1 Cor. 15:51; Rom. 11:25: “For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part has happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.” When the Church is formed, its last member being brought in, when the fullness of the Gentiles is come in, Israel will be saved as a nation and the deliverer come out of Zion. Christ will appear for their deliverance.

Again, turn to 1 Cor. 1:6, 7, “Even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you: so that ye come behind in no gift: waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” All the promises of the prophets will be fulfilled at that coming.

Turn back to Acts 3:19, 20, 21; “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out when [read, “so that"] the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord, and he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: whom the heavens must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouths of his holy prophets since the world began.” He had been before preached to them, but it is the same Jesus that had been spoken of to them. We cannot apply it to the Holy Ghost, for it was the Holy Ghost then come down who spoke by Peter and declared that He should come whom the heavens had then received. In Acts 17:30, 31, the apostle in testifying that though God winked at the times of their ignorance, He now commandeth all men everywhere to repent: because He hath appointed a day in the which He will judge the world (i.e., this habitable earth) in righteousness by that man whom He hath ordained, whereof He hath given. assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead.

The distinctive resurrection of the saints will be at His coming. 1 Cor. 15:23: “But every man in his own order: Christ the first fruits: afterward they that are Christ's at His coming.”

Ephesians and Galatians are the only two books in Scripture in which you do not find the coming of the Lord. The Galatians had got off the foundation of faith absolute justification by faith in Christ; and Paul was obliged to return to the first principles of justification. The Epistle to the Ephesians takes the opposite extreme, and you see the Church in Christ in heaven so that it cannot speak of Christ coming to receive it. It is viewed as now united to Him there. But we shall find constant reference to it in the other epistles that it is a point kept before the mind for present, practical effect.

Phil. 3:19, 20, 21: “Whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things. For our conversation is in heaven from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.”

Col. 3:1, 2, 3, 4: “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.”

In the Thessalonians it is the main subject of both epistles. In the first Epistle, except the warning in the fifth chapter, it is the blessedness of it to the saints; in the second epistle, the judicial character, though the glory of the saints is included in it, for when He executes judgment on the living we shall appear with Him in glory.

1 Tim. 6:14: “That thou keep this commandment without spot, unrebukeable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The apostle exhorts Timothy to go on diligently and faithfully looking for the appearing. When the word of God is speaking of joy to the saints, it is the coming. The moment he speaks of responsibility to the world or to the saints, it is always His appearing. What would have been the use of his saying to Timothy to keep the commandment until His appearing, if it were not practically a present expectation; and then, how mighty its power on the conscience (not the very highest motive, but one we need)? And if through grace the Lord has delayed His coming, not willing that any should perish, those who have acted on that expectation will have lost no fruit of their fidelity: it will find its recompense in that day. 2 Tim. 4:8: “Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them that love His appearing, “Love!” do you love, can you love, that which will put a stop to everything that is pleasant in the world? it asks the heart. How does this mark a spirit entirely in contrast with that of the world?

Heb. 2:5-6, “For unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak. But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him?” The world to come is the habitable earth. Christ is now at God's right hand till God puts all things under His feet. In chap. 9:24, “For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true: but entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.” There was a state of probation before man was turned out of paradise. Since then man has indeed been tried up to the death of Christ, whether law or prophets or the mission of God's Son could win him back, but in vain. What man finds out now is, that he is lost; but then, that when man's sin was complete, God's work began, and redemption is by the cross on which man crucified the Lord. Sin was complete then: but He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. That work is completed and those who through grace believe and have part in it await the same Savior to come again for their final deliverance.

James 5:8. Be ye also patient: stablish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Here again we see how it is presented as a present motive for patience and to be looked for in daily life as sustaining the soul in patience yet as that which was to change the whole state of the world.

In 1 Peter we have a remarkable testimony to the order of God's ways in this respect. First, the prophets who learned, in studying their own prophecies, that what they testified was not to be fulfilled in their day; next, the gospel, but this not the fulfillment. In it the things are reported with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. The saints are called on to be sober and hope to the end for the grace to be brought to them at the appearing of Jesus Christ, whom, having not seen, we love. The time of the saints receiving the promise is the appearing of Christ. 1 Peter 1:10-13.

In second Peter you may remark that he makes the slighting this promise, the calling it in question because the world was going on as it had, to be the sign of the scoffers of the last days.

In 1 John it is mentioned in chapter 2:23, for the conscience as ground of warning, but in the third chapter 1-3 we have it amply used for the heart and walk of the saints. Now are we sons of God. It doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is: and he that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure. Our blessed and assured hope is to be like Christ Himself: this we shall be when He appears. The present effect of this special hope is that the saint purifies himself even as He is pure seeks to be as like Him now as possible, takes his part with Himself at His appearing as his motive and standard of walk.

Jude 14. “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of His saints.” The epistle is striking in this; it shows the decline of the church, the false brethren coming in unawares who in character designated the state of the professing church in the last days and the object of the judgment of the Lord when He would appear.

The whole book of Revelation refers to this; it is an account of the preparatory judgment of God, on to chapter 19, when the Lord comes forth to execute judgment. He has accomplished the work of salvation, and is sitting at the right hand of God, and then comes to set all things right. This makes His coming (besides the righteous display of His own glory, of God's eternal Son as man the center of all things) of such importance. It alone actually makes good the plans and counsels of God Glory is founded on His first coming. That morally speaking surpasses all glory. It is the absolute display of what God is, when evil is come in. But at His second coming only the actual result will be made manifest. He comes to receive the Church to Himself, the witness of sovereign grace, and to order the world (subject to Him in the power of His kingdom) in blessing, and so display the government of God. Till He comes neither can take place. We enjoy the full revelation of Him from whom all that blessing flows, and enjoy it here in a nature suited to it and flowing from it; but we wait for the results for ourselves and for this burdened world. We love His appearing. How is it with you? Are you linked with the world He subverts when He comes, or with Him who brings the fullness of blessing, though with judgment on what hindered it? Were He to come now, would it be your awaited joy and delight, or does it alarm and try your hearts? The Lord give you to answer before His face.

I have sought this evening to show, you how it forms the constant topic of Scripture, and enters as a present expectation into the whole structure of the habits of thought of those who were taught by the apostles, by the Spirit of God Himself how its loss was the sign of the church's decline and sinking into worldliness and the world. I leave it to the blessed Spirit of God to bring this divine teaching home to all our consciences. To wait truly for Christ, we must have our consciences purged by His first coming, and our hearts fixed on Him that is to come.

Fragment

The ground of settled peace, in the midst of a world of sin and sorrow, is to assure my soul that God is true when He says, that He so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life,

Fragment

Christ, not my forgiveness, is the object of faith, though my forgiveness follows as a consequence revealed by God.

Fragments Christ's Lordship

We are brought into connection with the Lord Jesus not only in his character of grace, but of lordship. What is the first mark he has stamped on your heart? This—that Jesus must be known and honored; I belong to him; I must yield myself to him in everything. Are you doing your own will or his? If you have large thoughts of grace, magnificent thoughts of glory to come, but have not said, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” you are not on right ground. You have to come to this— “my own plans go for nothing, I now belong to another.” if you have large thoughts of grace, has it taught you to yield your own will to God's? If you have large thoughts of your privileges, do you see your responsibility? If you are talking of glory, is it connected with obedience? You may have right thoughts, nicely packed together, as for a long voyage, but they are of no good to you, if there is not in you the spirit of obedience

German Rationalists and the Bible: Fragment

They comment on a book of which they know nothing, the object and import of which they have not even studied. An immense scope of connected thought and system, reaching from genesis to the melting away of time into eternity—all its parts hanging together, and developing every form of relationship between God and man, historically pursued, yet morally and individually realized, in which each part fits into the other, like the pieces of a dissected map, proving the perfectness and completeness of the whole; all this system, I say, making a complete whole, in absolute unity, yet written (for written it was, as the best testimony proves) at long intervals, over a space of some 1500 years, pursued through every various condition in which man can be placed, of ignorance, darkness, and light, with principles brought out into intended contrast, as the law and the gospel, yet never losing its perfect and absolute unity, or the relationship of its parts, all this is past over by these skeptics. They are not conscious of the existence of it. They have about as much knowledge of the bible as a babe who took the dissected map, and would put together two parts of the antipodes, because they were colored red, and would look pretty

God's Word, Not the Opinion of the Day

IT is not astonishing, I say, that one who blames the Lord and H is Apostles, (so as to make their use of Scripture no kind of guide to its meaning or purpose, but assumes full right to get at the truth by giving his own application, and to get freedom promised by Christ through it)—that he should put Christ and all truth out of sight in a Christian world, look to politics governing it, and take indifference and no truth as his standard and his hope. But it is all a delusion. Those who buy the truth and sell it not will hold to it, and take Christ's word as the revelation and standard of it for their hearts, owning the Apostles as ministers of it by the Spirit. Many will take refuge in it, too, from sorrow, and passion's rage on the other side, when the, dissolution looked for takes place. But the present working will be this: the philosophical indifference of rationalists will palsy sturdy Protestant orthodoxy, which till now held its ground against Popery. Popery, which does not rest on truth a bit more, but on authority, and in its nature is essentially infidel, does know what it wants and what it wills, and will pursue it constantly, cleverly, and energetically, and all hold of truth will be gone in the country. This state of things the Dissenters will help on, and then find how weak they are. The main effect of this rationalism will be giving power for a time to what knows its own mind, that is, to Popery. The rationalism itself has no future at all. Of what would it be the future? Of inquiring and waiting till the Pope and infidels take the New Testament for a common ground? They can destroy, perhaps, faith in the truth (where it is not in the heart), but produce nothing.

I believe the Word of God abides forever. I believe Christ, our Lord, has all power in heaven and in earth; and for the soul who loves the truth, I believe it is a very bright and blessed time. I admit that what old 'associations may attach men to, is disappearing. Every one sees it, though how much we have to thank God that in this country it is peacefully; though I doubt that Christian or religious liberty will last very long as it is now, the revival will help to destroy it: but as outward props tumble and disappear, for those who have Christ in their hearts, and to whom the truth is precious, He will be more and more all, and the truth have infinitely more power and price. They will live more in Christianity, and less in the Christian world formed by phases of the αιωνος τουτου. I feel thoroughly that they are times most simple for those who love the truth, and blessed ones; soon I trust to be replaced by heavenly and better ones still. Only Christ and the truth must be of course all.

On the Epistle to the Hebrews

I have no doubt that the Epistle to the Hebrews is Paul's. The omission of his name has raised a question on it from early days. The Roman Church did not receive it for a long time, but I am satisfied it did at the first. I judge that Clement's epistle, addressed as it is, in the name of the whole Roman Church, is a plain proof of it. The desire to get rid of passages in chapters 6 and 10, which seemed to favor a peculiar rigidity of discipline, led that church to cast a doubt upon it, on account of the controversies it was engaged in on the subject; the epistle's being addressed, as it evidently is, to Jews connected with Jerusalem and Palestine, making it less known than those addressed to Gentile churches.

Its inspiration, I hesitate not to say, stands far above all question. It is different in style from the Apostle Paul's familiar epistles addressed in intimacy, if we except that to the Romans, to particular congregations he knew. In this last, also, we find a long course of elaborate argument and use of Jewish scriptures. Still it is addressed to them in a character which extended to those he had never seen. The Epistle to the Hebrews is a treatise elaborately composed as a last warning to the Jews, whose polity was just going to be put an end to, and urging them to have done with it as ready to vanish away, and to go out without the camp. The contrary conduct had been borne with hitherto. Now this was urgent. Who so fit for this as Paul? It was at the close of his career; for he refers to Timothy being set at liberty, and himself as free, and to the saints in Italy.

The neglect of his counsel produced the bastard Christianity (if Christianity it can be called) of Nazarenes and the still worse sect of Ebionites, whose hatred to Paul, consequently, was most violent. They rejected, indeed, all his writings.

The subject of the Epistle to the Hebrews is of the highest and most elevated character. It affords instruction which no other part of scripture does on the personal glory of Christ; yet it confirms, and is confirmed by all. It treats these subjects with a method and reasoning drawn from the depth of divine relationship, and yet possessing perfect clearness, a union which flows from divine inspiration alone, and characterizes it. Passages of scripture (the connection of which with the whole scope of the divine mind, as revealed in the word, is brought out when Christ is applied as a key to them) are quoted in a connection which, when the link of thought is given in Him, has a beauty and evidence which leaves no doubt of the divine hand that has been at work—a connection which shows, when given, that this alone could be their own full bearing, and yet, without this blessed key, remained locked up to the human mind; the connection thus made plain affording a complete testimony to Christ, and, at the same time, by Him, not only a proof of inspiration, but a divine fullness to the word itself, and such a combination of it as proves the unity of mind in the whole book, and that mind to be God's who alone could conceive or unfold such a plan.

Now the Hebrews furnish, in a very remarkable manner, such unlocking and connection of scripture, and with a power of reasoning and unity of scope and purpose, pursued with an energy of mind and thought, which peculiarly characterizes Paul. The blessed Apostle is specially occupied with the counsels of God, the divine plan of dispensation: as John with the manifestation and communication of divine life; Peter with the pilgrim character of it here, connected with the hope of a suffering and rejected Savior, the Son of the living God, whom he had known, and knew to be risen and gone up, and hoped for again.

With the dispensational character of Paul's writings the Epistle to the Hebrews clearly classes itself. It has a more finished style, as being an essay. It is, in its contents and reasonings, suited to Jews, because addressed to them. Perfectly satisfied that it is scripture, and a part of it whose loss would be irreparable, having the stamp of the divine gift upon it, I do not in the least doubt it is Paul's from its character and the details alluded to in it. The reader is aware that in the 2nd Epistle of Peter it is expressly stated that Paul did write to the Jews. The omission of his name is perfectly according to God. He was not apostle of the circumcision, he was a doctor for all that he could teach in the Church of God. In the form of the epistle he was in his only true divinely given place in thus writing. The effect of this is seen, and so it ought to be, in the style.

Every one admits the difference of style; it is natural that that of an elaborately drawn-up essay should be different from the style of familiar epistles within the exercise of Paul's apostolic office. The question is, what conclusion is to be drawn from it in connection with other far stronger and more important points, which affect the authorship of the Epistle. The doubt of its divine inspiration, whatever Rome may have thought for its own reasons during two centuries, would only excite pity in my mind. There are proofs of inspiration which have a character that infidelity does not touch, being connected with the development of divine counsels and wisdom in the word, of which the infidel does not possess the elements, and cannot, because he is an infidel. I admit that these are intellectual proofs to the believer; but they do astonishingly secure and confirm the faith of him who has some acquaintance with these counsels—just as in the case of a perfect tally, or a broken piece of metal, he who has only one piece has no proof as to the other. But he who has both, has not a doubt as to the connection of one with the other. And divine things are yet more certain; for man could imitate, in material things, in some cases: (though, in most, doubt would be irrational:) in divine things, he cannot. The connection is unknown till discovered.

Difficulties, we have seen, have arisen as to the Epistle to the Hebrews, from Paul's not naming himself as an apostle. Besides what I have said as to his not being apostle of the circumcision, there is another point I would notice here. It connects itself with another objection to his being the author; his saying that it was “confirmed unto us by those who heard him.”

Now, if we examine the manner of presenting things in this epistle; if Paul be the author, he could not have introduced himself as an apostle, writing to them as such.

He is addressing the Hebrews, who had already faith in the scriptures, and basing all his argument on them in unfolding the person and offices of the Lord Jesus Himself. It was not apostolic announcement of doctrine in the way of revelation with authority, but application of admitted scriptures to Christ, to show that He ought to be such, and be on high, according to them; and to show the necessary coming in of the new covenant. Old Testament scriptures were necessarily his authority here; the whole matter he had in hand, to which his apostolic authority added nothing. Nay, their authority was what he had to insist on -using the word of wisdom in applying them.

Now this he does in a manner which entirely shuts out all possibility of introducing his own apostolic authority. He brings in God speaking Himself in the Old Testament—an acknowledged truth with the Jews. God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath, in these last days, spoken to us in [the] Son; or, more nearly, as Son—that is, in the person of the Son. Now this took a ground which left no room for beginning: Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ. God Himself, who had spoken of old by the prophets, had now spoken in the Son Himself. Hence we have that which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, that is, it was the great Prophet Himself, nay, the Lord Himself, who had spoken to the Jews. And hence, as referring to what He had said when on the earth, the personal address of Jesus, he speaks of those who had heard Him; God bearing them witness by signs, &c. Now that was exactly the way in which God had dealt with the Jews: and the Christian testimony itself had been appropriately and peculiarly brought before them; and by which the nation had been made responsible, and not by Paul's teaching. But it was in writing to them just his place to refer to it; and peculiarly his to unfold the whole glorious position of Christ as mounted on high, (as indeed it was given to him only to declare,) and his, to put Jews in immediate connection with heaven, paving the way for the passing away of all connected with the old covenant, and exhorting them to go outside the camp, as being no longer of God. The great sacrifice of atonement was offered, the high priest was gone within with the blood, the body was burnt without; the middle holy place of Judaism, suited to its day, was naught. In spirit we were within, in suffering in the flesh without, bearing the blessed victim's reproach.

Now the unfolding of this was just Paul's place, not Peter's. Yet it was just his place too to refer to that very testimony which made the Jews responsible, which was not his, but which he derives down from God speaking by the prophets, and then as in the person of the Son (ἐν υἱῶ); thus making it God's direct testimony to them—i.e., the Jews, with whom he joins himself as a Jew, in the most beautiful and gracious way (as he had said “the fathers,” not your fathers, and only bringing in even apostles themselves as confirming it). He does not associate them with God's testimony, or with the Lord's; only they come in to assure it to others, and even then he brings in God bearing them witness, and then proceeds to exalt and glorify Christ's person. In a word, he addresses himself perfectly to Jews as such, yet to bring them out of their Judaism. Had he not been thus above it, he could not have given it the place he does in the character of the testimony given to it. It was taking them high enough up to the source of the testimony, to lift them above the system formed beside it. Indeed, prophecy was the link of God with Israel, when, in the way of righteousness under ordinances, He could have nothing to say to them. He interfered by a prophet to bring them out or back. “By a prophet he brought them out of Egypt; by a prophet were they saved.” It was God's sovereign way when there was no other. God's great prophet had now appeared to lead them out for a better salvation; He was the apostle of their profession. Peter could not lead them out of a Jewish position: he had ministered to them still in and under it. Paul's ministry as an apostle was directed elsewhere. He graciously makes Christ their Apostle, while owning in its place that of all the apostles among them, yet as hearers of the Lord.

Hope

Hope enters the heart, so to speak, as a physician or as a conqueror, to heal in the day of sorrow and disappointment, or to be the ascendant in the day of prosperity.

It is seen in the antediluvian saints, in the Genesis—fathers, in Joseph in Gen. 1; in Israel, in Ex. 12; in Moses, in Num. 10:29; in David, in 1 Chron. 29:15, in one or other of these.

The Lord had it as a conqueror in John 12:24, as a relief in Heb. 12:2. We are called to it in each of these ways.

The Spirit forms it in the heart as necessarily as faith, Ex. 12:1, 7-11 Thess. 1:9-10, Rom. 5:12.

Different objects it apprehends—rest after conflict (2 Thess. 1, 2 Tim. 4); a pure kingdom after a defiled world (2 Peter); Christ Himself (Luke 12:36, Matt. 25:4, 1 John 3:2-3); a harvest after a first-fruits (1 Cor. 15).

How Far Did Christ's Advent Fulfil Prophecy?

This is not the time for judging the earth in connection with God's people, Israel, (though providentially, of course, all is under His hand), but for grace, heavenly hope, and suffering with Christ nothing can be clearer in Scripture than this. Christ did not judge the earth when He came—He refused to do it in the least thing; He was condemned by its judges wielding externally God's power and authority in the place of judgment, Jewish and Gentile. All judgment was set aside, and the just One was the victim of man's judgment and the bearer of God's wrath. This was, indeed, morally the judgment of the world and its prince, the enemy. But the execution of judgment is yet wholly future; and so is the resulting accomplishment of Divine purpose. And this is the trite answer to skeptical cavils against a second fulfillment. The purpose of God declared in prophecy has never been fulfilled at cell: Christ's sufferings have been, no doubt, but nothing else save the consequent dispersion of his earthly people; but this is not God's purpose (properly speaking). Particular local judgments have been executed; but neither are these His purpose: that remains wholly unaccomplished. God has not yet shown Himself according to his purpose. When the wicked shall be cut off, who are often adversaries of His power, a King will reign in righteousness, and the Prince of Peace will exercise His dominion in the world. Christ at his first coming declares that it was not to bring peace but a sward: shall then this blessed, character of Prince of peace remain unfulfilled? Certainly not; for the moment sin had the upper hand in the world, because God was graciously doing a still greater work, and showing Himself above all man's futile sin in making it the instrument of an eternal and heavenly salvation. But this earth will be the scene of peace and blessing under the government of God, wielded by the hand of the Son of man, whom He has set over the works of His hands. Grace meanwhile has made us His joint-heirs.

Introductory Address

No. 1. Vol. 1—June 1, 1856

The name of this periodical is not one which I should have chosen, as it wears a pretentious air -least to an unfriendly eye. But the project was unknown to me till after the first number, or the second, was in the hands of its readers. To the third I contributed the first of a series. From the eighth number the editorial care was mine; not long after the entire responsibility devolved on me. Though never liking the title as a question of taste and feeling, I saw in it no sufficiently serious objection to risk the confusion which must have ensued from a change of name. If the work be a poor “Treasury,” as I cannot but feel, “the Bible,” at any rate, is in God's grace a rich and unfailing source of supply.

Accordingly, whilst the prophetic word has not been neglected throughout the past eleven years, I may say, of its course, the reader can bear witness that there has been the continual desire to draw from every province of Scripture, avoiding no truth which God has revealed for our instruction. The person and the work of Christ, the expectations of Israel from of old, the prospects of the world, the hope of the Christian and of the Church, the dispensations and the kingdom of God, have all been treated, most of these subjects frequently and by various pens, and this with a direct view to the practical profit of souls. Exposition of Scripture (Old Testament and New, portions and whole books), has had, and I trust, ever will have a large place. So too questions of the day for good or ill have been discussed, with occasional reviews or notices of such books &c. as handle them. Neither exhortation to Christians nor appeal to the unconverted will be looked for in vain in these pages. Critical difficulties, faults of textual reading in Greek and Hebrew, emendations of translation, and corrections of prevalent interpretation, may not interest so extensive a class, but they have ever had a prominent place here; because the aim has been to consider such Christians especially as desire to make progress in the things of God. Now, mistake in text or version or exegesis arrests the mind in proportion to the value given to God's word. Hence, to such as prize that word above all things, the exceeding preciousness of every fresh insight into its true bearing, and the importance of removing every hindrance.

As for the writers, no matter of interest to the believer, or of bearing on Christ's glory, will they exclude or evade; though it is assuredly desired to avoid the discussion of every unprofitable question, and to rid all things discussed as much as possible of a controversial air. Papers of real value from any Christian will of course be admissible, save where known evil practice, or indifference to Christ, ruins the credit of the profession of His name. In the first edition, some papers appeared which it seems due to truth to replace, and notices of ephemeral matter are consigned to oblivion. But care will be taken to adhere to the former paging and subjects as closely as can be, so as to avoid confusion in making up volumes.

May the gracious Lord deign to use the work increasingly to the edification of souls and to His own glory. “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine.”—[ED.]

Is Not Obedience Too Much Forgotten When You Insist on Justification by Faith?

Q. Is not obedience too much forgotten when you insist on justification by faith? Does not Paul exhort us to “fear” and to “labor” to enter into that rest. E. P.

A. Scripture maintains obedience and practice in the right place; that is, good works do not make, but they manifest and become the Christian. They cannot exist before a man is regenerate; though they may to a certain extent before he enjoys peace with God and the consciousness of acceptance. He who is not a believer, is by nature a child of wrath, and inevitably fulfills the desires of the flesh and of the mind. “There is no difference, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” They travel the same road, each his own way, it is true, but all with their backs toward God. Some may have traveled long and fast, others a comparatively short way and time; these may be outstripped by those in self-destructive madness and rebellion, but both agree alas! in their terrible condition of sin, ruin, and death. To speak to such of obedience as a means of salvation simply proves entire ignorance of ourselves and of God—shows that, like Israel at Sinai, we confound responsibility with power. Doubtless, men ought to obey, but can they? Beyond controversy, God gives Christians the spirit of power, love, and a sound mind. Therefore are we to be partakers of the afflictions of the gospel, according to the power of God, who hath saved us and called us with an holy calling, NOT according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace (2 Tim. 1:7-9). This is the divine description of a Christian accepted, but not yet glorified. The apostle clearly speaks of believers on earth—not in heaven, where are no afflictions of the gospel, and no temptations to forget our holy calling. On the other hand, the rest in Heb. 4 is future rest—the rest that remains for God's people. We are there viewed as journeying through the wilderness, and in danger of carelessness, ease, and settling down. Hence the apostle exhorts to fear and labor. Had the question been of justification, he would have said, Do not fear, do not labor; “for to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.”

Is the Manifestation to Be Before Brethren of the Lord Simply?

2 Cor. 5:10. is the manifestation to be before brethren, or the Lord simply?

I find nothing in scripture which speaks of manifestation to brethren. The question is apt to connect itself very closely with the state of the conscience. it presses on it when there is anything from which it is not entirely purged before God. There may be a conviction that God will not impute without the conscience being de facto pure or purged. When purged before God or practically pure in walk (though this, as the apostle says, does not justify), the soul is not anxious about being manifested at the judgment-seat, because it is manifested to God now. This is of great practical importance.

The passages on the subject, which will be seen to be of two classes, are these—Rom. 14:12. So then every one of us shall give an account of himself to God, connected with verse 10, We shall all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ. 2 Cor. 5:10. For we must all be manifested (appear) before the judgment-seat of Christ to receive the things done in the body.

1 Cor. 4:4, 5. For I know nothing by myself (no evil of myself), yet am I not hereby justified: he that judgeth me is the Lord. Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who shall bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and shall make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God.

Rom. 2:16. In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men's hearts according to my gospel.

This is one class of texts. The other here follows: Matt. 10:26. Fear them not, therefore, for there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, and hid that shall not be known.

Mark 4:22. Is a candle brought to be put under a bushel or under a bed, and not to be set on a candlestick? For there is nothing hid which shall not be manifested, neither was anything, kept secret, but that it should come abroad.

Luke 8:16, 17. No man, when he hath lighted a candle, covereth it with a vessel or putteth it under a bed, but setteth it on a candlestick, that they which enter in may see the light. For nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest, neither anything hid that shall not be known and come abroad. Take heed, therefore, how ye hear, etc.

Chap. 12:1, 2. Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy, for there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known.

Three great principles are here presented. First, the great general truth, that man can keep nothing secret (though it may seem so), and can conceal nothing. All must be in light. God must have the upper hand and light shall prevail. Secondly, that we are to give an account of ourselves to God. And, thirdly, that we are not to fear the secret machinations of men, but to fear God and bear witness according to the light given to us. When I say man can conceal nothing, it is scarcely absolute enough. There is nothing secret but that it should be manifested.

This is a very important principle. It maintains the authority of God as light. For could anything be withdrawn from this, it would escape His power and judgment, and evil be maintained independent of Him. It maintains also integrity of conscience.

In the second point, our personal responsibility to God is maintained in everything. Each one shall give an account of himself. We may be helped by every vessel of grace and light in the Church, but man cannot meddle with our individual responsibility to God. Each one shall give an account of himself.

The third point maintains confidence in God, in presence of what might seem otherwise a wickedness which was of a depth with which it was impossible to deal, and for which Christian truthfulness was no match.

All this is to maintain the conscience in the light before God. Where there is anxiety as to manifestation before the brethren, shame before men has still power over the heart, and will; self-love and character govern the mind. We are not in the light before God, nor has sin its right character in our eyes, because self has yet its power and place.

All is to be brought into the light, all thought of concealment rooted out and destroyed in the heart; but God will not maintain the influence of men and reputation by presenting a manifestation to them in the word, which is exactly what falsifies the moral judgment; and He does not. If the heart is comforting itself with the thought it will not be known, He breaks through the heart's deceit relentlessly, and says it will be known: everything hidden shall come to light. He does not neutralize His own authority and destroy the purity of moral principle, in saying it will be known before your brethren in that day.

Everything will be in the light, thank God; it is for the blessing, and for the joy, too, of every upright soul.

It is not necessarily simply in the day of judgment that this takes place: the Lord may deal with it now. “Thou hast done this thing secretly,” says God, by Nathan, to David, “but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.”

Thus the bringing of sin to light and judgment may be here from the hand of God. Men are chastened of the Lord that they may not be condemned with the world.

One passage remains, demanding more particular notice—2 Cor. 5— “For we must be all manifested before the judgment-seat of the Christ, that each may receive the things done by the body, according to that he has done, whether it be good or bad.”

I would first say, to remove what obscures the passage, that I am satisfied that the passage is general, and embraces all men. I cannot conceive how the context can leave a shadow of doubt on this point in any mind. It ought not. It is not a question of the time of appearing, but of the fact. Secondly, it is very important to remark, that as regards the saints there is no calling in question their righteousness. The manner of their arrival before the judgment-seat, and their state in arriving clearly show this, as well as the declaration of the Lord (John 5), that they shall not come into judgment. But how do they arrive on high? “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also.” Christ comes Himself to complete His work of perfect grace in bringing us there. In that state we “wait for the Lord Jesus Christ [as] Savior, who shall change our vile body and fashion it like his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things to himself.” (Phil. 3:20.) We shall be already like Christ; conformed to the image of God's Son, bearing the image of the heavenly. He who sits to judge according to His righteousness, according to what He is, is our righteousness.

The judgment of the saints begins when righteousness and glory are complete, when we are the same as Christ in them by grace.

What immense gain will our manifestation now be to ourselves! We shall know as we are known. If now, when perfect peace is possessed before God in a purged conscience, the Christian looks back at all his past life before and since his conversion, what a lesson of grace, patience, holy government for his good, that he may be partaker of His holiness—of care against unseen dangers, of instruction and of love, will his new history afford the Christian! How much more, when freed from the very nature which produced the evil in him, he knows as he is known, and can trace now the perfectness of God's ways with him! It will immensely increase and enhance his apprehension of what God has been for him, and of His patient perfect grace and purpose of love. It is surely a solemn thing, but of immense price and value to us. It is all wrought out in the conscience, as we learn from Rom. 14:12.

Here it is the fact. Remark the true effect on a right state of mind. First, not a thought of judgment as to righteousness has any place whatever. The judgment seat only awakens that love which thinks of those still exposed to it. “Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.” Secondly, it is realized so as to put him who realizes it responsibly in the presence of God. Now “we are manifested to God.” Oh, what a healthful and blessed thing this is for the soul! The rest is a mere effect readily hoped for— “I trust that we are manifested in your conscience.” The other considerations produced a conduct proper to have this effect; but if a man was before God, it was of little matter—did not affect the soul, save in the desire of others' good and Christ's glory. This double effect will certainly be produced in any such manifestation before others, and we then shall as certainly desire nothing else. The shame of a nature we have left will not be there then; the just judgment of evil will. I say this, however, in respect of the present condition of the soul. Anxiety on this point is a proof that the soul is not wholly in the sight of God. There it disappears because we are wholly there. Scripture never brings in the thought of brethren as concerned in this manifestation, and could not; but it does maintain, in the fullest way, manifestation in the light, so that if the heart reserves anything—has not brought it wholly out before God, it should be ill at ease. We are certainly perfectly manifested to the Lord, consciously I mean (for we always are so), and to ourselves. If it be for His glory that anything should be known to the saints also, we shall not regret it then; but our proper full manifestation is certainly to God, and in our own souls. All that is needed to verify the government of God will, I doubt not, be made manifest. All that has been, through evil, sought to be hidden, so that the heart was false, the counsel of the heart evil, will be brought to light; but where men have walked in the light, the counsels of the heart, however man may have judged them, will be made plain; for in that day God will judge the secrets of men's hearts. His grace and His government may have wrought all this in this world, and some men's sins and good works go before to judgment, but those that are otherwise cannot be hid.

My answer then is, that the brethren are never, and can never be those, manifestation to or before whom can be the subject of the revelation of scripture—everything being brought into light is. God is light, and the light manifests everything; He will bring every secret work into judgment. Further, as to responsibility, our thoughts are directed to God and to the judgment-seat of Christ. But all that is needed to display God's ways and government, and His approval of His saints will surely be brought out, as the passages quoted clearly prove. The saint loves the light, as he loves and blesses God for the grace which enables him to stand in it, and makes him meet to be partaker of the inheritance of the saints in it. This, though doubtless imperfect, is, I believe, the true scriptural answer to the question. Where the thought of shame is introduced, it is referred entirely to the presence of Christ, and regards the service and work done for Him (1 John 2:28).

People and Land of Israel: 1. Jews After the Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus

It must be evident to the believer that the Jew is of the last importance in God's history of the world. “When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.” The dispersion of the postdiluvians was not a casual chance-medley circumstance, but so ordered of God as to admit Israel as their earthly center. This has been verified in their past history, though suspended at present; but prophecy discloses that every jot and tittle of the divine scheme is to be fulfilled in the grand scenes of the last days.

The philosophic infidel does not of course see—probably may deride—the purpose of God as to His earthly people. Nevertheless, the Jew has haunted many all unbelieving mind, has broken in like a specter upon his dreamy materialism. The too celebrated Hegel often and long thought upon Hebrew history, often changed his thoughts: his life long,” says his biographer, “it tormented him as a dark enigma.” If Christ crucified proved to the Jews a stumbing-block, the Jews are to the Gentiles an abiding sign which the wisdom of this world vainly essays to fathom and expound.

Of the history of this people, terrible from their beginning hitherto, Dr. Edersheim has given us some instructive chapters, the first fruits of his studies in a department full of interest. After an introductory sketch of the Hebrew commonwealth, we are presented with a graphic yet touching picture, the “closing scenes of the Jewish war of independence.” Let the reader judge:-

“The stars twinkled just as they had done in happier days over the burning walls of Masada. Beneath rolled the Dead Sea—the monument of foreign wrath and war; in the distance, as far as the eye could reach, the desolate landscape bore the marks of the oppressor. Before them was the camp of the Roman, who watched with anxiety for his prey and the morrow. All was silent in Masada. Defense now seemed impossible, and certain death stared the devoted garrison in the face. Despair settled on the stoutest, heart, deepened by the presence and the well-known fate of the women and children. Naught was heard but the crackling of burning timbers, and the ill-suppressed moans of the wives and children of the garrison. Then for the last time Eleazar summoned his warriors. In language such as fierce despair alone could have inspired on his, or brooked on their part, he reminded them of their solemn oath—to gain freedom or die. One of these alternatives alone remained for them—to die. The men of war around him had not quailed before any enemy, yet they shrank from. the proposal of their leader. A low murmur betokened their disapprobation. Then flashed Eleazar's eye. Pointing over the burning rampart to the enemy, and in the distance towards Jerusalem, he related with fearful truthfulness, the fate which awaited them on the morrow—to be slain by the enemy, or to be reserved for the arena; to have their wives devoted in their sight to shame, and their children to torture and slavery. Were they to choose this alternative, or a glorious death, and with it liberty—a death in obedience to their oath, in devotedness to their God and to their country? The appeal had its effect. It was not sudden madness, nor a momentary frenzy, which seized these men when they brought forth, to immolate them on the altar of their liberty, their wives, their children, their chattels, and ranged themselves each by the side of all that had been dear to him in the world. The last glimmer of hope had died out, and with the determination of despair, the last defenders of Judea prepared to perish in the flames which enveloped its last fortress. First, each heaped together his household gear, associated with the pleasures of other days, and set fire to it. Again they pressed to their hearts their wives and children. Bitter were the tears wrung from these iron men; yet the sacrifice was made unshrinkingly, and each plunged his sword into the hearts of his wife and children. Now they laid themselves down beside them, and locked them in tender embrace—now the embrace of death. Cheerfully they presented their breasts to ten of their number, chosen by lot to put the rest of their brethren to death. Of these ten, one had again been fixed upon to slay the remaining nine. Having finished his bloody work, he looked around to see whether any of the band yet required his service. But all was silent. The last survivor then approached as closely as possible to his own family and fell upon his sword. Nine hundred bodies covered the ground.

“Morning dawned upon Masada, and the Romans eagerly approached its walls—but within was the silence of death. A feint was apprehended, and the soldiers advanced cautiously, raising a shout, as if the defenders on the wall implored the help of their brethren. Then two women, who, with five children, had concealed themselves in vaults during the murderous scene of the preceding evening, came forth from their retreat to tell the Romans the sad story. So fearfully strange did it sound, that their statement was scarcely credited. Slowly the Romans advanced; then rushing through the flames, they penetrated into the court of the palace. There lay the lifeless bodies of the garrison and their families. It was not a day of triumph even to the enemy, but one of awe and admiration. They buried the dead and withdrew, leaving a garrison. ‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem that killest the prophets,' &c. ‘Therefore, behold, your house is left unto you desolate.'

“Thus terminated the war of Jewish nationality. Various causes conspired to make this contest one of the most obstinate ever witnessed. The Roman legions were led by the ablest generals of the empire, and instigated by the recollection of the shameful defeat which they had sustained at the commencement of the war, and by the obstinate resistance now made by a small and unwarlike race whom they had long affected to despise. Nor was the issue of the struggle unimportant to the Roman state. Defeat under any circumstances would have been the first step in the decadence of an empire whose provinces bore so disproportionate a relation to the dominant country. Besides, Roman rule had never been firmly established eastward of Judea, and on that account the latter country presented an important military position. Finally, the triumph of the Jews would have been fatal to the prestige of Rome in the East, and probably become the signal for a general rising in the neighboring provinces. On the other hand, the Jews fought for national existence, for political and religious liberty, for their lives, for their hearths and homes. Flushed at first by victory, relying on the zeal and enthusiasm of the whole nation, and defending themselves in their own country, and among its fastnesses against the foreign invaders, the Jews fought with the despair of men who knew what awaited them in case of defeat. Besides, they relied on promised succors from their brethren in the East, or at least on a diversion in their favor.

Nor was this contest merely one for national independence; it was essentially also a religious war. Jerusalem was not only a political but also a religious capital. In fighting for their country, the Jews fought also for their religion, which, indeed, was almost inseparable from the soil of Palestine, and hence, as they thought, for the name and cause of their God. Were it requisite, proofs could be readily adduced of this. Even after they had been defeated, it was stated by the theological expositors of popular sentiment, that since the day of the destruction of the temple, God had mourned for the fate of his people, and that joy had become a stranger in the celestial mansions. Hence they constantly reckoned all along on the Divine assistance. The Maccabees had in former times, with a mere handful of men, defied the Syrian hosts, and why should not similar success be vouchsafed to them under more advantageous circumstances? And even if it turned out otherwise, surely it could only happen in judgment, and for a season, that their God had left His covenant people, His special favorites, for whose sakes even heaven and earth had been created, and who alone fulfilled the end of their being by glorifying their Maker. Whatever, then, might be their divinely appointed fate, to conquer or to die, the Zealots were ready to meet it in such a cause. These views were indeed intimately connected with the whole of the carnal tendency in their religion to which we have already, and shall by and by more fully advert. To belong outwardly to the chosen race constituted a person a member of the kingdom of God. The place and rites of the temple were identical with acceptable worship; outward observances, and a mere logical development, became substitutes for spiritual apprehension of the truth, for love and devotedness. Thus as the form was being more and more cultivated to the neglect of the spirit, it appeared also more and more precious, and its final destruction, by an overthrow of the Jewish commonwealth, seemed almost impossible. Nor were the expectations entertained about that time of the sudden appearance of a Messiah, who, long hid, would suddenly come forth to deliver his people from the enemies which threatened them, without their effect on the minds of the people. Though the life and death of the blessed Savior had too lately taken place for the leaders of the people lightly to risk the safety of the Synagogue, by bringing Messianic views prominently forward, as they did in an after period in the war under Bar-Cochba, in order to inflame the zeal of their followers, such considerations must no doubt have had some influence. At times these hopes seemed about to be realized. More than once did the balance tremble in favor of the Jews—the Roman generals were in imminent danger—the Roman engines destroyed—the Jews successful—the legions panic-struck or dispirited. Yet the scepter passed finally and irrevocably from Judah, by the same hand which had at first placed it there. Calculating merely the first probabilities of the case, we would say that the war was begun at a most favorable time; and that notwithstanding the various mistakes and disadvantages of the Jews, had there not been treason in the Jewish camp, or had there not been factions and bloody revenge amongst themselves, or had their eastern allies made a diversion in their favor, they would have obtained the object of their desires, or at least have had a greater measure of success in their defense. But true it is that ‘the history of the world is the judgment of the world.'

“About the same time that the Jewish war terminated, Rome attained the climax of her grandeur. Hostile movements had taken place in other provinces, but these had now been suppressed, and Vespasian opened once again the temple of peace. But this prosperity was of short duration. We do not mean to connect the destruction of Jerusalem and the decline of Rome's Empire as cause and effect; but it is certain that the former immediately preceded the latter event. The insurrections in the northern parts of the empire were only quelled for a time, the fire still smoldered under the ashes—it speedily burst forth anew, and destroyed that mighty engine with which the Lord had, in fulfillment of prophecy, punished His people. So it has ever been: the rod of His vengeance, after having served its purpose, has always been speedily broken in pieces.” (pp. 42-47.

Neither our author nor our readers will have reason to regret so long an extract: it is a fair and favorable sample of the volume, and well illustrates both manner and subject-matter. Chapter iii. furnishes a good deal of curious information as regards the dispersed of Israel.

The three following chapters are occupied with the political and religious state of the Jews, and with the history of the synagogue before and subsequent to the destruction of Jerusalem. Next is given a stirring narrative of the last Jewish war under Bar-Cochab, with a sketch of the state of the synagogue afterward. Chapters 9, 10, and 11 have evidently involved no little labor and research, and convey much which cannot be found elsewhere in our language; they are devoted respectively to an account of the social condition, arts and sciences, theology and religious belief of Palestine. The historical thread is again resumed with a notice of the patriarchate under the last pagan Emperors, till its extinction and the final scattering of the Jews. All is wound up with an appendix on these heads: 1, Jewish Calendar, 2, the Wisdom of Ben Sira, 3, Alexandrian Jewish Poetry, 4, Geographical Nations of the Rabbins, and 5, Rabbinical Exegesis.

The following extract from chapter. 11. (Theological science and religious belief in Palestine) will show our readers some of the interesting details in which the latter part of Dr. E.'s volume abounds.

“From internal evidence, and from the accordance of the Septuagint translation of the Pentateuch with that of the Samaritans, it has been inferred that both were originally derived from an old Aramean Targum, to which allusions are made in Jewish writings. It has also been argued that the present LXX was of very gradual origin, while from the frequent variations, the existence of different editions, if not translations, has been inferred. Leaving out of view the mistakes, additions, or emendations by copyists, and its frequent interpolations, there is an internal relationship between the spirit which the LXX breathes, and that of the version of Onkeloz, and of the Targum of Jonathan. Many passages show clearly that the translation was made under Hagadic influences. The learned reader will notice, that the Greek of Josh. 13:22 becomes only intelligible by the Hagada, that Balaain had by magic flown into the air, but that Phineas had thrown him to the ground and killed him in the fall. The translation of 1 Sam. 20:30 is explained by the Hagada, that Jonathan's mother was one of those maidens of Shiloh (Judg. 21) and had of her own accord gone forth to offer herself to haul. The reading in 1 Sam. 28:19 depends upon the legend that apparitions of ghosts were generally in an inverted posture of body, while that of Samuel had come up in the ordinary or straight position. Numerous similar instances might be quoted. Again we find clear traces in the Halacha, as in the translation of Lev. 11:47. Similarly, the rendering of Lev. 19:6, 7, which has commonly been imputed to Alexandrian peculiarities, becomes plain by the Halacha which applies the passage to the intention of those who offered the sacrifice to eat it on the third day, and enjoins that, under these circumstances, the sacrifice may no more be offered. Similarly, the version of Lev. 23:11 is explained by a reference to the Halacha. However, the version of Leviticus is the best in the Pentateuch. It would be easy to multiply instances from other parts of the Bible. Considerable Hagadic additions also occur. Thus, we have in Prov. 6:8, praise of the diligence of the ant; in Josh. 24:30, a Hagadic story about the knives with which Joshua circumcised the Jews, in imitation of a similar Palestinian Hagada about Moses; numerous additions to the book of Esther; an addition to Hag. 2:9, &c. Sometimes verses were left out, or even whole passages transposed. It is well known that the pronunciation of Palestine proper, or Judea, favorably differed from that of Galilee; and this is also transferred to the LXX, which follows more closely the dialect of Palestine. Passing over grammatical and other blunders, contractions, amplifications, and attempts at circumlocution, we notice that sometimes verses are translated in one and left untranslated in another place, as the word “plains” (in one version) in Josh. 11:16, and again in 12:8; or the “children of Solomon's servants,” in Ezra 2:55, while in verse 58 we read the “children of Abdeselma,” &c. Sometimes prepositions are treated as if they formed part of the appellative, while evident traces of having been translated from the Arameau are found in Psa. 60:10, &c.” (pp. 452, 426.)

There are views, particularly in the opening chapter, from which we must dissent, but they are in no way such as affect the general bearing and value of the work: perhaps we are bound to add that they are the current coin of the religious world. As a history of the Jewish nation, and as far as it has gone, we cannot withhold our strong commendation. It is a clear, compact, spirited and withal conscientious production, well deserving a place on the shelf of the Christian student, and a large circulation among those who take pleasure in the stones of Zion and favor the dust thereof.

People and Land of Israel: 2. Jerusalem

A Letter from Jerusalem of a recent date, in the Augsbury Gazette, says:

“In digging out the foundation of a house which is being built in tine city for the Austrian Catholic Clergy, the workmen discovered at a depth of about fifteen feet from the surface several subterranean rooms, the walls of which are of hewn stone, and the floor of mosaic. The most important part of the discovery is, however, a grotto cut out in the rock, and supported by five columns. There are certain indications which lead to the belief that this grotto had served as a church for the early Christians; but the grotto, it is supposed, was formed before the advent of Christianity. Several capitals of Corinthian columns and fragments of antique marbles have also been found. The Austrian, French, and Prussian consuls, accompanied by the architect Eddlicher, who is superintending the building have visited these subterranean galleries, and have had photographic drawings made. The Musselman authorities throw no obstacles in the way of those archeological researches.”

The Abbe J. H. Michon has just published a pamphlet entitled, “La Papaute it Jerusalem.” He thinks that, the influence of modern ideas having produced no effect on the administration of affairs at Rome, the progressive element of the nation has become a formidable enemy to the stationary element of the Pontifical Government; that the old machine may, it is true, go on, well or ill, so long as it is aided by foreign diplomacy or foreign occupation; but that, the moment these are withdrawn, the Papacy will be helplessly exposed to revolution, and that the danger is imminent. The solution of this question is not to be found, he thinks, in political, administrative, or civil reform, nor in the secularization of clerical power. It is to be found only in the abdication of temporal power. He is of opinion that, in such a case, the capital of the spiritual Papacy could not be Rome. This power would lose in dignity, and would still suffer from political complications. He believes that there is but one city in the world which presents conditions indispensable to its independence and grandeur, and where a new era would arise for the mission of a true apostle; and that city is Jerusalem!

People and Land of Israel: 3. Recent Travels in the Holy Land and Neighboring Countries, Part 1

It appears from the Jewish Chronicle that the project for a railway from Jaffa to Jerusalem has been abandoned for the present. It is not that any insuperable difficulties stood in its way, for the line has been surveyed by a civil engineer of celebrity, who pronounces decidedly in favor of its feasibility. But the financial results anticipated are not such as to encourage the enterprise, unless grants of land were made by the Ports, such as are usually given by government in imperfectly cultivated countries Aali Pacha did not see fit to hold out this inducement; but those interested in it are looking for greater vigor and decision from Redschid Pacha.

On the other hand, the Sultan, who had already presented to the Emperor Napoleon the Church of the Nativity at Jerusalem, has also given him the old palace of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, which is annexed to St. Peter's prison.

Thus, with whatever slight delays and temporary checks, the prophetic student will descry the growing tendency and desire of the West to facilitate the political restoration of the Jews to their own land. Alas, an untimely birth! which will issue in the deepest sorrows, and in divine judgments upon all concerned. “For afore the harvest, when the bud is perfect, and the sour grape is ripening in the flower, he shall both cut of the sprigs with prunning hooks, and take away and cut down the branches.” Nor will it be merely the disappointment of Israelitish hopes; for their Gentile patrons will prove their scourge, and will turn again and rend them. “They shall be left together unto the fowls of the mountains, and to the beasts of the earth; and the fowls shall summer upon them, and all the beasts of the earth shall winter upon them.” But that very time shall see the Lord undertake the work, and gather in His people with a high hand. “For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth.” “And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people; all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people in the earth be gathered together against it.” Their worst tribulation immediately precedes their final deliverance, and the putting down of the Gentiles, who will afterward owe their best blessing, as far as means are concerned, to Israel. “And it shall be in that day, that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem; half of them towards the former sea, and half of them towards the hinder sea, (i.e. east and west:) in summer and in winter shall it be (i.e. always, as depending on God, not upon the mere natural seasons.) And the LORD shall be King over all the earth: in that day shall there be one LORD, and his name one.”

People and Land of Israel: 3. Recent Travels in the Holy Land and Neighboring Countries, Part 2

1. Later Biblical Researches in Palestine and the adjacent Regions: a Journal of Travels in the year 1852. By Edward Robinson, Eli Smith, and others. Drawn up from the original Diaries, with Historical Illustrations, by Edward Robinson, D.D., LL.D., &c. With Naps and Plans. (London: John Murray, Albemarle Street. 185G.)

2. The Desert of Sinai: Notes of a Spring Journey from Cairo to Beersheba. By Horatius Bonar, D.D., Kelso. (London: James Nisbet & Co., Berners Street. 1857.)

In the preface, Dr. Robinson states that with this volume closes the record of his personal observations in the Holy Land. “To these my BIBLICAL RESEARCHES in the Holy Land, the fruit of thirty years of preparation, and of personal travels in 1838 and 1852, I can hope to add nothing more.” The present work is intended as a supplement to his former one, and prepared of course on the same principles. “The great object of all these travels and labors has been, as formerly announced, to collect materials for the preparation of a systematic work on the physical and historical geography of the Holy Land To this work, so much needed, should my life and health be spared, I hope speedily to address myself.” (p. 6)

The book before us consists of thirteen sections, with a few notes and indexes, the last of which, Passages of Scripture Illustrated, is meager and incomplete. Judged by that list, one might well wonder why the volume was entitled “Researches,” for Matthew and Revelation are the only books of the New Testament referred to, and these in the most cursory way. As to the Revelation, the solitary allusion is divided with Neh. 13:5: and Job 24:14, as well as with one of the two references to Matthew. Even as regards the Old Testament, the prospect looked extremely unpromising. We are glad to say, however, that this is the fault of him who drew up the third index; for the body of the work and the foot notes really discuss a considerable number of points interesting to the reader of scripture, as will appear presently.

The maps which are at the end, drawn up by Kiepert, of Berlin, principally from materials furnished by Dr. R., the late Dr. E. Smith, and other American travelers, appear to be extremely full and accurate.

From the cold, minute, business-like “Researches” of the American traveler, we turn to Dr. Bonar's Notes of his journey to the borders of Canaan. We were disappointed to find that it is spun out. It is to be followed by “Notes of a Journey through the Land of Promise.” The matter would not have been too much for one volume, particularly as we might have been spared, without loss, many allusions to things and places at home, and oft-recurring descriptions of the sky and the stars abroad, not to mention dubious scraps of erudition and caustic allusions to the peccadilloes of Keble's oriental descriptions. Notwithstanding, it is a relief to meet with a modern book of travels, written by a man who honestly believes in the Word of God. We may meet with almost wearisome illustration of the points of parallel between Old Testament allusions and the manners of the East to this day, most of them trite and some far-fetched indeed. Still there is no comparison between the general, moral, and godly tone of this latest contribution, and that which prevailed in the more ambitious works of Lepsius, Robinson, and others.

People and Land of Israel: 4. Travels in Sinai and Palestine

Sinai and Palestine, in Connection with their History. By Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, M.A., Canon of Canterbury, with Maps and Plans. Third Edition. London: John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1856.

Our object in the present paper is to cite some passages in the most able and interesting of recent works on the Holy Land, and at the same time to afford evidence whether or not it ought to have the confidence of the Christian and the Christian household.

Mr. Stanley's preface is devoted to his view of the connection of sacred history with the geography of the promised land. He attempts to trace its influence on national character, on forms of expression, the explanation it offers of particular events, and the evidence afforded of historical truth, with its illustrative, poetical, or proverbial uses. Most of our readers will feel that it is an attempt to invest what at best is but Gibeonite labor, “hewing wood and drawing water,” with a grandeur to which it is in no way entitled. Still as such servitude had its place towards Israel and the sanctuary, the believer may reap good if he know how to turn to account these efforts, earthly as they are.

The introduction treats of Egypt in relation to Israel Part I., on the peninsula of Sinai, is a fair sample of Mr. S.'s graphic and comprehensive pen. This peninsula is, in certain respects, one of the most remarkable districts on the face of the earth.” It combines the three grand features of earthly scenery—the sea, the desert, and the mountains. It occupies also a position central to three countries, distinguished not merely for their history, but for their geography, amongst all other nations of the world, Egypt, Arabia, Palestine. And lastly, it has been the scene of a history as unique as its situation; by which the fate of the three nations which surround it, and through them the fate of the whole world, has been determined. It was a just remark of Chevalier Bunsen, that 'Egypt has, properly speaking, no history. History was born on that night when Moses led forth his people from Goshen.' Most fully is this felt as the traveler emerges from the valley of the Nile, the study of the Egyptian monuments, and finds himself on the broad tract of the desert. In these monuments, magnificent and instructive as they are, he sees great kings and mighty deeds—the father, the son, and the children—the sacrifices, the conquests, the coronations. But there is no before and after, no unrolling of a great drama, no beginning, middle, and end of a moral progress, or even of a mournful decline. In the desert, on the contrary, the moment the green fields of Egypt recede from our view, still more when we reach the Red sea, the farther we advance into the desert and the mountains, we feel that everything henceforward is continuous, that there is a sustained and protracted interest, increasing more and more, till it reaches its highest point in Palestine, in Jerusalem, on Calvary, and on Olivet. And in the desert of Sinai by the fact that there it stands alone. Over all the other great scenes of human history—Palestine itself, Egypt, and Italy—successive tides of great recollections have rolled, each, to a certain extent, obliterating the traces of the former. But in the peninsula of Sinai there is nothing to interfere with the effect of that single event. The Exodus is the one stream of history that has passed through this wonderful region—a stream which has for its background the whole magnificence of Egypt, and for its distant horizon the forms, as yet unborn, of Judaism, of Mahometanism, of Christianity.” (pp. 3, 4). This extract exemplifies our author, and not least his unhappy practice of blending things divine and human, heavenly and earthly, which may fascinate the natural mind, but is abhorrent to the spiritual man.

Take another specimen. “It is between those two gulfs, the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Abaka, that the peninsula of Sinai lies. From them it derives its contact with the sea and therefore with the world, which is one striking distinction between it and the rest of the vast desert of which it forms a part. From hardly any point of the Sinaitic range is the view of the sea wholly excluded; from the highest points both of its branches are visible; its waters blue with a depth of color more like that of some of the Swiss lakes than of our northern or midland seas, its tides imparting a life to the dead landscape, familiar to modern travelers from the shores of the Atlantic or German ocean, but strange and inexplicable to the inhabitants of the ancient world, whose only knowledge of the sea was the vast tideless lake which washed the coasts of Egypt, Palestine, Greece, and Italy. It must have always brought to the mind of those who stood on its shores that they were on the waters of a new and almost unknown world. Those tides come rolling in from the great Indian Ocean; and with Indian Ocean these two gulfs are the chief channels of communication from the northern world. The white shells which strew their shores, the forests of submarine vegetation, which gave the whole sea its Hebrew appellation of the Sea of weeds, the trees of coral, whose huge trunks may be seen even on the dry shore, with the red rocks and red sand, which especially in the gulf of Akaba bound its sides, all bring before us the mightier mass of the Red or Erythrean Ocean, the coral strands of the Indian Archipelago, of which these two gulfs, with their peculiar products, are the northern off-shoots. The peninsula itself has been the scene of but one cycle of human events. But it has, through its two watery boundaries, been encircled with two tides of history which must not be forgotten in the associations which give it a foremost place in the geography and history of the world; two tides never flowing together, one falling as the other rose, but imparting to each of the two barren valleys through which they flow a life and activity hardly less than that which has so long animated the valley of the Nile. The two great lines of Indian traffic have alternately passed up the eastern and the western gulf, and though unconnected with the greater events of the peninsula of Sinai, the commerce of Alexandria, and the communications of England with India, which now pass down the Gulf of Suez, are not without interest, as giving a lively impression of the ancient importance of the twin gulf of Abaka. That gulf, now wholly deserted, was in the times of the Jewish monarchy the great thoroughfare of the fleets of Solomon and Jehoshaphat, and the only point in the second period of their history which brought the Israelites into connection with the scenes of the earliest wanderings of their nation. Such are the western and eastern boundaries of this mountain tract; striking to the eye of the geographer, as the two parallels to that narrow Egyptian land from which the Israelites came forth: important to the historian, as the two links of Europe and Asia with the great ocean of the south, as the two points of contact between the Jewish people and the civilization of the ancient world. From the summit of Mount St. Catherine, or of Um-Shomer, a wandering Israelite might have seen the beginning and the end of his nation's greatness. On the one side lay the sea through which they had escaped from the bondage of slavery and idolatry—still a mere tribe of the shepherds of the desert. On the other side lay the sea, up which were afterward conveyed the treasures of the Indies, to adorn the palace and the temple of the capital of a mighty empire.”

Here the reader may observe the good and bad points of Mr. S. In all that is external, and that touches on human affairs, there is much which is valuable and masterly; but when he approaches the ways of God, as revealed in Scripture, there is a melancholy falling off. No Israelite has yet seen “the end of his nation's greatness,” nor can see it, we may add. Indeed, that nation's sun has never yet reached its meridian, and, once risen, shall never set. “Thy sun shall no more go down.” The reign of Solomon was but the partial and transient prefiguration of this destiny when a greater than Solomon, the true Son of David, whom. himself typified, “shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end.”

Very unsatisfactory too is his mode of dealing with the passage of the Red Sea. The magnificence of the crisis, and its long train of associations are frankly admitted. But there is a careful insinuation of all that might reduce the fact to the level of the extraordinary but natural.

With very different feelings would we refer to chapter 2 pp. 112-117, which exemplifies Mr. S.'s happiest manner in linking together the external features with the history and calling of the people.

The rest of the chapter traces the peculiarities of Palestine as a land of ruins, its present condition as compared with the past, its climate and volcanic phenomena, its physical configuration, scenery, and geological features, as illustrations of scripture phrases.

Chapter III. is devoted to Judea and Jerusalem, as is chapter IV. to the heights and passes of Benjamin; chapter V. to Ephraim and Manasseh; chapter VI. to the maritime plain; chapter VII. to the Jordan and the Dead Sea; chapter VIII. to Perna and the transjordanic tribes; chapter IX. to the plain of Esdraelon; chapter X. to Galilee; chapter XI. to the Lake of Merom and the source of the Jordan; chapter XII. to Lebanon and Damascus; chapter XIII. to the gospel history and teaching, viewed in connection with the localities of Palestine; and chapter XIV. to the Holy places, with an appendix of Hebrew and topographical words, arranged under different heads. It is curious that the finest sketches of the Canon of Canterbury are the battle scenes of ancient and mediaeval times, with which his accounts of cities and rivers, hill and dale, are plentifully bestrewed. His most frequent and perilous fault is habitual exaggeration of secondary causes, the suppression or veiling of the divine actings in the scripture history of the chosen people. We have only to add that the illustrative maps, which convey the coloring and nature of the ground, rocks, &c., of the Desert and Palestine, are interesting and valuable. With our author's corrections of the Authorized Version (save of appellatives) we do not agree. Fuller knowledge, we are persuaded, would dispose of not a few which are apparently the offspring of foreign criticism, and this is a most suspicious source, except for verbal minutiæ.

People and Land of Israel: 5. Morality of the Jews

The Jewish Chronicle of this month (May) affords melancholy evidence of the dissolving process going on among the Jews, as elsewhere. Far be the thought from us that the Christian Church is aught but a wreck! It is not, therefore to excuse our own sin and shame that we extract sentiments sanctioned by the highest Jewish authorities in this country—sentiments which the humblest person could eschew, who abides a Jew. “We will not dispute the desirability of maintaining the legislature Christian. To maintain it Christian means to maintain it Jewish. Christian morality is Jewish morality, and Jewish morality is Christian morality. The morality of Jesus is the reflex of that of Moses.” Nor is it limited to moral questions. The writer is showing why Jews do not seek, as he says, to make proselytes. “The Jews believe that the salvation of Gentile depends upon the practice of the morality taught in the law and the prophets, and that the observance of the ceremonial part, although binding upon Jews, has no reference whatever to those from without the pale of Judaism.” Alas! is not this shutting God out of the matter? Is faith in Jesus a mere “ceremonial” thing? Is it not fatal to refuse Him if He is the true Messiah and Son of God? Is it not idolatry of the worst dye to worship Him if He be not! What did Moses say should be the portion of a false prophet and his adherents? (Deut. 13) What did Moses say should become of those who hearken not to the words of the true Prophet, “like unto him” (Deut. 18) The claims, the testimony of Jesus cannot be said, by a “conscientious Jew,” to be innocuous if untrue. It is a poor morality which begins with ignoring the sin of blasphemy and imposture in the holy things of God. And if the confession of Jesus is not falsehood but the truth, where are the Jews, and what their morality? “Father, forgive them.” “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.”

People and Land of Israel: 6. Place of Wailing Jerusalem

But as the sun was going westward, and the sabbath day rapidly approaching, we hastened toward the place of wailing. I found my own way, up one street, down another, through narrow alley after alley, and at last emerged suddenly in a small paved court or place, seventy or a hundred feet long by twenty broad, the east side of which was the high wall of massive stones on the west side of the mosque enclosure, which is without doubt the same wall that stood here, enclosing the temple in the days of its great glory. In this place the Jews are accustomed to assemble, and with low murmurs of prayer, to bewail the desolation of the holy places. Moslem rule forbids their nearer approach to their once holy hill.

The impression made on my mind by the scene here witnessed will never be effaced. Men, women, and children of all ages, from young infants to patriarchs of fourscore and ten, crowded the pavement and pressed their throbbing foreheads against the beloved stones. There was no formality of grief here. We waited till the crowd had thinned away and only a dozen remained. These were men of stately mien and imposing countenances: their long beards flowed down on their breasts, and tears, not a few, ran down their cheeks and fell on the pavement. There was one man of noble features that we especially noticed; whose countenance for more than half-an-hour seemed unmoved by any sensation of earth, save only that of grief too deep for expression. I approached close to him, but he did not look up at me. He sat on the pavement, his back to a wall of a house or garden, and his face to the wall that once enclosed the shrine of his ancestors. I looked over his shoulder, and saw that he was reading the mournful words of Isaiah; nor did I then wonder that he wept for the mockery that now occupied the place of the solemn services of the daily sacrifice, and the senseless Moslem traditions, which in vain essayed to cloud the glorious history of the mountain of the Lord.

Evening came down, and with the sunset the sabbath commenced. Still some old men lingered, and still we lingered too, for the scene was not to be witnessed elsewhere on all the earth. The children of Abraham approaching as nearly as they dared to the holy of holies, and murmuring in low voices of hushed grief and sobs of anguish their prayers to the great God of Jacob, some kissed the rocky wall with fervent lips-some knelt and pressed their foreheads to it-and some prayed in silent speechless grief, while tears fell like rain-drops before them.

I was deeply moved, as one might well be in the presence of this sad assembly-the last representatives, near the site of their ancient temple, of those who once thronged its glorious courts and offered sacrifices to the God who had so long withdrawn His countenance from the race. A more abject race of men can hardly be conceived than are the downtrodden children of Israel in the city of their fathers, except when they assemble here where the majesty of their -grief demands respect from every human heart. - Tent Life in the Holy Land

Job 33

This is a very complete and wondrous chapter. It is Elihu's first word to Job, speaking to him as for God, of God, from God.

Ver. 1-5. His confidence and conscious authority, as from God; “not as the Scribes,” or as Job's friends.

6-7. His gentleness and sympathy. (See Peter, in Acts 10, John in Rev. 19-21, and Gal. 6:1). Jesus' sympathy offered from these.

8-13. After a pause—after this preface, he begins his address, rebuking and exposing Job. This is as the Gospel deals with us. (See John 4)

14. He states man's natural stupidness and insensibility touching God.

15-22. He shows God using the plow—of a dream, of a striking providence, of bodily pain or sickness—in order to break up such fallow ground. And such is the work to this day. (See Acts.)

23.-24. The sower comes after the plowman. (See Acts.) The seed is the Gospel. Ransom is provided of God, deliverance is brought to the sinner.

25-26. The condition of the believer.

27-28. A more rapid action on the sinner by the Spirit; an interpreter not used, as in Matt. 9:9. This is so still, as well as the cases in ver. 15-22.

29-30. Elihu tells Job these are samples of God's way in saving souls.

31-33. He asks Job at the last as at the first, had he anything to say.

On the Book of Job

Job pretends to no ostensible date. The ways of God are simply and directly in question.

The reader of the Book of Job is let in at once into what was really going on, that he may know God's purpose and ways. Job is not. It would have destroyed the effect of the gracious, though painful, process. God takes notice of His saints. “Hast thou considered my servant Job?” Satan's attention thus attracted to them, in a way which shows that God, whatever Satan's malice, is the real source of all that is to follow; he becomes the accuser. Thus the great scene of which man (and, we must add, the saint) was the object, really opens.

God, whose purpose is only disclosed at the end, in the profit done to Job's soul (though His being the source of all is revealed), leaves Job, in a measured way, in the hand of the adversary for temptation and trial. Such is the scene and spring of action from within. But all comes on Job from without by apparently ordinary causes. The predatory hordes of Sabeans, Chaldeans, and the like, make razzias on his flocks and herds; a violent wind from the desert throws down his house when his children are feasting; and at last a disease of the country attacks his own body—rapidly accumulated, no doubt; but all ordinary events, however trying. What was Job's own character? He was, in his general character, a godly, upright, gracious man, fearing God, eschewing evil, and gracious with those around him. Why should evils, if there be a divine government, fall on such an one? If this world be simply the present manifestation of divine government as such, then, indeed, it would be incredible. But though Providence overrules all, and God delights to bless, even temporarily; and though, in result, when He takes to Him His great power and rules, the blessing of the righteous will fully arrive; yet now, in a world of sin, He is carrying on another purpose—the perfecting of saints for the full enjoyment of Himself. This, since sin and will are come in, is wrought in two ways—judgment of self and submission to God.

Now Job needed, and God saw that he needed, this. He was gracious and pious, but He did not know Himself; and he had never so seen God as to be brought to a real knowledge of Himself in His presence. God deals, therefore, with him in a way to bring his sinfulness fully out, and then places him with it manifested to himself in His own presence. Elihu's place we shall see in a moment. He gives the key to God's ways in grace, in order to the bringing in of the soul dealt with into God's presence, as under discipline, not under judgment. Job had acted well, for grace had acted in him; but he did not know himself before God. Thus he speaks: “When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me; because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him. The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me, and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy. I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my judgment was as a robe and a diadem. I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame. I was a father to the poor; and the cause that I knew not I searched out.” All very right and gracious; but was it all that was in Job's heart? What did the thinking of it do? What did it show? Men waited for Job, no doubt. But where was Job's heart? What was it? Well, God allows Satan, in his malice, to sweep all away; and here more good is displayed. He is patient in his sorrow. He blesses God, and bows his head to Him who gave and saw fit to take away.

But Job's heart was not yet reached. Its reflections on itself there was nothing to change. Men would have said, “What more can you want than grace in prosperity, and patience in adversity?” I want such a knowledge of myself as makes God everything to me, and me morally capable of enjoying Him. Had God stopped here, though outwardly preparation had been made, Job would have been better pleased with himself than ever. Had God restored him now, mischief would have been done. Satan had done all he could. His friends arrive; and sympathy or shame (for God will have His blessed work fully done) reveals Job to himself; and he who has become the type of patience, curses the day in which he was born. The surface is broken through, and Job, and his friends too, come out in their reality. His friends take the ground of the present certain government of God manifest in all His ways; in which they are wholly and in every sense wrong. Did He directly govern, He could allow no sin at all. He who could suppose this present evil world the expression of the just and adequate results of God's character in government, must have an awful idea of God Himself. They had a pre-existing standard of morals, and judged God and all things by it. God loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; Job was under his afflicting hand: consequently, he was a hypocrite. They pronounce, indeed, many “wise saws,” common-place truisms, which explained nothing, and reached no man's conscience, not even their own—and hold their tongues, vexed that their wisdom was despised.

In Job two things are brought out—an unbroken, impatient will, which set up to judge God and say that he was more righteous than He; but, at the same time, a heart which had a sense of relationship with God, though in rebellion against Him, and writhing under His hand—a perception of qualities in God, which showed a personal knowledge of Himself, which only longed to find Him, and knew that, when he did, he should find Him such. He could not indeed. He was in one way, and who could turn Him aside? But if he did, he would order his cause before Him. There was that confidence in Him, that he counted upon His heart towards him. When he can get rid of the stupid importunities of his moralizing and heartless friends, he turns to cry after God with an “O that I might find Him!” In justice, he sees it is no use. How can a man plead with God? But in heart, he will trust Him if He slay him. Nothing can be more beautiful than the way he turns thus, casting aside his friends as he may, to throw himself into the arms of God, if he could only find Him. But all was not ready yet; the confidence would be sustained, but the will must be broken self-complacency destroyed. In this process all manner of feelings come out—impatient anger presumptuously arraigning God; acknowledging present government in pious justification of His ways, clearly proving that it was no present adequate proof of what God thought of a man; a deep, personal, heart-sense of what God is, expressed in confidence in Him. The heart was fully exercised, its evil brought out, its good, its faith in God brought into play: but the riddle was not yet solved.

Elihu then comes in, “an interpreter, one among a thousand,” and brings in this truth—that God deals personally with man. A general, superintending government no doubt there is—a God that judgeth the earth; but there is another kind of government—that of souls. He turns man from his purpose. He hides pride from man. He hideth not his eyes from the righteous. They are with kings; but he binds them in affliction and cords of iron, to show them their works, their transgressions that they have exceeded. He chastens, restores. He governs with a view to blessing—governs souls in a moral relationship with Himself. He was not God to terrify Job; yet Job could not answer when God, acting in respect of an unjudged conscience and an unsubdued heart, was brought out.

Yet while judging the conscience, and showing the sin of the will and pride of heart, such reasoning showed God's active, condescending, pains-taking grace to a soul that had the integrity that was found in Job. Thus God's ways were revealed by the interpreter, and self-righteousness totally set aside. Still one thing remained where gracious ways had softened the heart of the willful one for submission. God's own majesty was to be revealed to show Job his utter folly, (worms and sinners that we are.) Hence God is displayed in majesty and power; and Job acknowledges his vileness, first by shutting his mouth before God—staying his presumptuous words; and then opening it in unfeigned confession before the gracious God who dealt with him, in whose presence he now stood in a truth and reality he had never been in before. “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee; therefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.” Then God can fully bless him, and pardon his friends, putting each in his place. These were, so to speak, the parties in question—self-righteousness referring to present government now; a saint, yet unsubdued and not knowing himself as a poor sinner before God; and the God of majesty with whom they all had to do. Elihu was but an interpreter by the way, and hence not seen when the judgment is to be pronounced. He answers to the intelligent spirit of Christ, acting by the word to teach God's ways as the Church ought to know them; and we “have heard of the patience of Job, and seen the end of the Lord, that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.” Such, I apprehend, is the purport of this book—the most instructive revelation for every soul of God's ways with men.

I do not doubt its application to Jewish history, for in the Jews God will ultimately display His government of the earth, as He has already to those who have spiritual intelligence to discern it. But that is but a large picture of man's heart and God's ways that we may learn them. There are higher revelations in the New Testament, no doubt. But the sovereign grace has not superseded these principles of intercourse of God with godly men—with the redeemed, and with men in general, which are brought out, independently of all dispensations, in this wonderful and most beautiful book. It carefully shuts out thus all special dispensational character or Jewish legal form of knowledge, or God's taking a people specially to Himself, while picturing the dealings developed in them. I have no doubt, from the kind of idolatry referred to, the patriarchal manners, and other characteristics of the book, that it is of Mosaic date at least: but however this may be, of its spiritual place and purpose in the holy book of God I have not the least doubt. The idea is a godly man, standing with God in government in the earth, and his acceptance before Him The reader will remark that sacrifices are introduced as the means of escape from the consequences of our folly and sin in respect of God. The Book of Job is the testimony now (independently of all peculiar dispensational truth and blessing, and it was the testimony before there were any) of the great fundamental truths on which all relationship between God and man on earth rest.

Joy

The kingdom, divine power, God Himself, brought in, joy is the element Be it, in the eye opened by the Spirit, in the judgment or government of the world, in the heavenly citizenship, this is so—in the operations of the Father, the counsels of the Father, or His ways and methods, this is so. These verses show this.

Earlier dispensations tested man, now God is brought in (see ver. 24).

Joy is the element in which the kingdom displays and exercises itself.

Joy at the reception of the Gospel, with Jews, Samaritans, Proselytes, Gentiles. Acts 2; 8:13

Joy enjoined all through our course. Phil. 4

Joy provided for our eternity.

All share it—God, Christ, the sinner, the worshipper, angels, heaven, earth. Luke 1; 2:10, 15, 24.

Luke has much joy, because much of grace.

The Kingdom of Heaven

The frequent recurrence of this expression in Matthew's gospel (for it occurs nowhere else in the New Testament), and of a somewhat similar one in all the other gospels, and through the whole of the New Testament, cannot fail to strike the careful reader of the word of God, and produce an impression of the importance of having a right understanding, according to God, of what the kingdom of heaven really is.

It is worthy of note that Matthew only uses the phrase; and the more so, as almost every other book of the New Testament speaks of the kingdom: but these invariably associate it with a person, as “the Kingdom of God,” or “Kingdom of Christ.”

The only Epistles where no mention appears to be made of the kingdom, are, 2nd Cor., Philippians, 1St Timothy, Titus, Philemon, 1St Peter, the three Epistles of John, and that of Jude and of these, 1 Timothy speaks of the “King,” and 1 Peter speaks of a “royal Priesthood,” which evidently refers to the thought of the kingdom.

Setting aside for a moment the inquiry as to why Matthew alone, so persistently (though not invariably) changes the form of the expression in general use in the New Testament, the expression itself at once carries us back to the prophet Daniel, where we read of the “King of heaven.” —(chap. 4:37) —and of the rule of the heavens, (4:26).

When God in the beginning created the heavens and the earth, it was manifest that the earth was intended of God to be the scene of blessing, with reference to man; and, excepting the statement of an eternal truth by one who was instructed in divine counsels, (Melchisedec, a figure of Him who was to come after—Gen. 14:19) it is only with reference to this earth that God makes Himself known, and is known by those who walked before Him But trial after trial only proved the more deeply what came out at the very beginning in the Garden of Eden, that man on his part was incompetent to be the recipient of unhindered blessing flowing out from God.

Adam, Noah, Abram's seed all failed in their time and place; and when God's chosen people Israel—chosen out of the earth to be a witness to Him—not only failed in their place of witness, but set up false gods in place of the True, God appeals to the heavens and the earth to hear the tale of woe (Deut. 32:1, Isa. 1:1, &c.), and introduces another witness, who was to come down from heaven to the earth to remedy what had all become involved in evil.

Further, when all that was outwardly connected with God in this earth, had fallen into apparently hopeless ruin, when God's Israel were captives in a strange land, when, moreover, God in judgment had taken the scepter out of the land of Israel, and transferred it to a Gentile monarch; then it is that Daniel's prophecy comes in to tell of the kingdom of heaven—that however God might appear to have lost His kingdom in this earth, it was still a fact that the Most High was ruling in the “kingdom of men,” and that He was also “King of heaven,” and so acknowledged perforce by the head of the Gentile world.

And most needful was such a testimony at such a time; for surely appearances were all against it. It seemed as if Satan had indeed wrested from man the authority committed to him as the chief of God's creation; it seemed as if he had wrested from God the real glory of His kingdom—unhindered joy in His creatures, and His creatures' unhindered communion with Himself. But not so: the promise in Gen. 3 revealed a truth, to be more fully unfolded afterward that in a MAN was to be found a remedy for it all; in effect, that when the KING came—the King after God's own heart—the kingdom should be manifested in divine glory, and in greater glory, and more intimate communion between God and His creatures than ever Eden knew.

But many counsels were to be unfolded first. The principle was made known in Eden in terms suited to the necessity of that time—the Seed of the woman, the Son of Adam, was to destroy the destroyer—but not until the flood had rolled over Eden, in God's first judgment of man's wickedness upon this earth, did the principle begin to be further unfolded; and not until another flood had rolled over that very Seed of the woman, did the full meaning of that revelation become known in another garden.

Still, in that first word itself was wrapt up the whole secret of what was necessary to introduce the kingdom in manifested glory, where everything, as far as man and Satan were concerned, only tended to banish the expectation of it forever.

There was the eternal enmity, and the double bruising, and all connected with a Man (the woman's Seed), so that when that Man really did come to earth, the answering testimony to Him (which, indeed, embodies all this truth in yet briefer terms) is, “Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.”

And inasmuch as the kingdom could not be manifested until that first bruising had taken place, which was the means of sin being duly taken away by Him who was the true Lamb, (for surely God's kingdom cannot be where sin is), so the Lord says in John that His kingdom is not of this world, and “except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God;” and Rom. 14:17 describes the kingdom of God as “righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” But nevertheless it is associated with the King, as of necessity it must be, for what were a kingdom without a King, or a King without a kingdom? Hence, when the King comes, even though in humiliation, the kingdom of God is preached (an expression peculiar to Luke), and every man presseth into it, after the way has been prepared by John the Baptist (Luke 16:16).

And therefore Matthew, Mark, and Luke speak of the mystery, or mysteries of the kingdom, and state that it is come nigh—wrapt up, as it were, in the person of the Son—the wisdom of God in a mystery, revealed now by the Spirit of God to the “stewards of the mysteries of God,” who know the kingdom to be “not in word, but in power.” 1 Cor. 4:20

Therefore it is said in Matt. 21:43, that the kingdom of God shall be taken from the Jews and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits of it. It is so bound up with the person of the Christ, the true King, that it goes with His rejection, and comes with His reception.

And so the Lord declares in Luke 4:43, “I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also, for therefore am I sent.” Matthew also distinctly declares His mission to be that of “preaching the gospel of the kingdom,” (4:23, 9:35). We see then that “the kingdom” is that which is associated with Christ, or bears His name in the earth.

It is called “the kingdom of heaven” in Matthew, that being the dispensational gospel—setting forth the One who was the Heir of the promises, in connection with that people who were to be the center of blessing on the earth, but whose departure from God and rejection of Christ do not, nevertheless, interfere with God's rule over this earth, as Daniel showed, nor with His final purposes towards it in Christ, however much the rejection of Him may have delayed their accomplishments. When earth has failed, the resource is from above in Him who introduces the “kingdom of heaven” [now in mystery and patience, by and by in manifestation and power].

The Languages of the Bible

We propose to devote a portion of our pages to the consideration of such subjects as may help our readers in the study of the sacred volume. Very often it is found that there are expressions in the Scriptures hard to be understood, simply because we may be in ignorance of some customs and peculiarities alluded to. And the books, in which these difficulties are explained, are too long and too expensive for the great mass of readers of the Bible. Or, it may be, that a man's other vocations leave him but little time to learn the languages in which the scriptures were written. And, while we may be satisfied that no part of God's will is really hard for those who are only seeking the burden of the messages which declares the will, yet we have no right willfully to neglect any part of that message. We may save well-meaning Christians from those sad displays of zealous ignorance, which occasionally bring scandal upon Christianity itself, if we give them an intelligible account of many things connected with the Bible—such as the different languages in which the Bible has been written; the distinction between the canonical and apocryphal books; the most famous translations that have been made: the manners and customs, the history and the geography referred to; and the way in which our English Bible has reached us.

These and similar topics we shall treat in a succession of papers. We begin with “The Languages of the Bible.”

It may be necessary to premise that learned men divide the whole number of languages that are, or ever have been, spoken, into several chief families, Of these by far the most important are—first, the Indo-Germanic family, including Sanscrit, Greek, Latin, and German, with nearly all European tongues; and secondly, the Shemitic, including Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic or Syriac.

Of this latter family, the Arabic has been the most cultivated; and, being the language in which the Koran is written, is known to Mussulmen all over the world.

The Hebrew, called the sacred tongue, because in it nearly all the Old Testament is written, seems to have been spoken in a comparatively small district; perhaps only in Palestine, Phenicia, and the immediate neighborhood. It is called Hebrew, because it was the language of the people of that name; and they appear to have been so designated, from Heber; who being the last patriarch, before the dispersion from Babel, must have possessed an authority (as speaking to an undivided people) which no succeeding patriarch could have had.

The term Hebrew language does not, however, occur in the Old Testament. There it is called the language of the Jews, as at 2 Kings 18:2G, or the lip of Canaan, as at Isa. 19:8.

Most probably this was the language of Canaan, before Abraham came into it. For we observe that his relatives on the other side of the Euphrates spoke another tongue (Gen. 31:47), and in the narrative of the intercourse between the Hebrews and the people of the land, there is no allusion to any difference of speech. Then, again, the names of places in Canaan, from the very earliest times, have all a meaning in Hebrew but not in any other language; and in the few existing records of the dialect of the idolatrous part of the land, as in the Phoenician, on coins discovered at Tire, and Malta; and in the daughter of the Phoenician, namely the Punic or Carthaginian, preserved in a Latin comedy of Plautus (Poenulus 5:1, 2), we find a form of speech identical with the Hebrew. The lastly, indigenous to a country place like Palestine, the same word is used to denote both Sea and West.

In this language, the whole of the Old Testament is written, with the exception of part of the Books of Ezra and Daniel. And it is remarked how little change the language underwent during the thousand years over which the composition of the book extended. This is due to the natural inflexibility of the language itself; the isolation of the people from the rest of the world; the influence of the Pentateuch in fixing it; and the general belief in its sacredness. For these reasons, the language of Moses is substantially the same as that of Malachi, in spite of some antique phrases in the former, and the gradually increasing admixture of Syrian with all the writers that succeeded Isaiah.

The Hebrew died out, as a spoken language at, or soon after, the Babylonish captivity, and was replaced by the Syrian or Aramaic, which was the language of their conquerors, the Assyrians and Babylonians. This was the language in which Eliakim begged Rab-shakeh to speak to the people in Jerusalem, because they did not understand it, as the chiefs themselves did. It seems clear therefore that the language of Syria began to penetrate Israel after this time; and, when the Jews remained for two generations in Babylon, they must have lost, nearly, if not entirely, all recollection of their former speech. Ezra seems to have interpreted the words of the Law to them on their return. (Neh. 8:8.) While yet from the fact of Zechariah, Haggai, and Malachi, continuing to write in Hebrew, we may conclude it had not quite disappeared; as we know it had a little later at the time of Alexander's conquests.

The language that took its place was much more widely spread: it is called Syrian in the English translation of the Bible, as at 2 Kings 18:26. Dan. 2:4. But it is usual now to call it Aramaic, since Aram is the real biblical word for Syria, and seems to have designated the country North and East of the Euphrates, from which Abraham had originally emigrated, and where afterward arose that fierce and conquering race which founded Nineveh and Babylon. It used to be called Chaldee, but erroneously; as the only place, where the tongue of the Chaldeans is mentioned, is at Dan. 1:4.: and there it manifestly means a language peculiar to a priestly caste at Babylon, not to the whole people.

At the time of our Lord, this was the native language of Palestine; and occurs in our Testaments, in the words, Ephphatha, Talitha Cumi, Eli Eli lama Sabacthani, &c. This was also the language of the inscription on the cross, and of St. Paul's speech as recorded at Acts 22. Although in both these instances the Hebrew is mentioned, there is no doubt that it is the modern, not the ancient, language that is meant.

In it are also written those parts of the Old Testament, which are not in Hebrew: viz., Dan. 2:4, to 7:28; and Ezra 4:8, to 6:18; and 7:12-26. Also the ancient Chaldee paraphrases on the Bible, and the Talmud. And to the present day it is the sacred language of the Nestorians and Syrian Christians; even of those on the Malabar coast of India.

The only other language that remains to be noticed, is the Greek, in which, the whole of the New Testament is written: a peculiar dialect of which prevailed in Western Asia and Egypt, in consequence of the conquests of Alexander the Great. Its chief locality was Alexandria, where the first Ptolemies had transplanted most of the arts and sciences which used to flourish before in Athens. This dialect is therefore called Alexandrian Greek, and is distinguished from the language of the classics, by having engrafted on it many Hebrew and other Oriental modes of expression; no doubt partly in consequence of the great numbers of Jews, who, from an early period, dwelt in Alexandria.

Even in Palestine, although Hebrew retained its place as the sacred language, and Syrian or Aramaic was spoken in the country parts, there is every probability that Greek was the ordinary speech of intercourse; and that it stood in the same relation to the native Aramaic, that English does to Welsh in Wales at the present day.

In this Alexandrian Greek is written the whole of the New Testament; the ancient Septuagint translation of the Old; and the works of Josephus and Philo. As it was the common language of the Eastern part of the Roman Empire, it became necessarily the common language of all early Christians, who for some years were confined to that part of the world. And even when Christianity had reached Rome and the West, there is evidence that Greek (and not Latin, as might have been supposed) was, for a long time, the ecclesiastical tongue.

It is a matter of discussion whether our Lord and his Apostles spoke Greek or Aramaic; and it does not seem possible to pronounce a decided verdict on the question. It is likely enough that all the people of Palestine, except the most retired or the most ignorant, understood and used, both forms of speech. Hence the threefold inscription on the cross. In Aramaic and Greek for the people: just as public documents in Wales might be in Welsh and English and in Latin, because that was the official language of Pontius Pilate, and the government's servants.

From the fact of some few Aramaic words of our Lord being preserved, we might conclude that he did not always speak in that tongue; and it must have been observed that when Paul addresses the people from the castle stairs in Hebrew (i.e. in Aramaic), they were pleased by this mark of respect to their native tongue; and had expected that he would rather speak Greek, which they understood equally well. On the other hand, the question of the chief captain, “Canst thou speak Greek?” would seem to have originated the second question, “Art thou not that Egyptian?” as Greek was certainly the language of Egypt at that time; and therefore the chief captain supposed he was not an inhabitant of Palestine.

At any rate, there was certainly a distinction between Greek-speaking Jews and others. For we notice in the Acts of the Apostles (chap. 6 &c.,) that some are called Hebrews and some Grecians. There is a difference of opinion as to whether the distinction consisted in the speech they used; or in the version of the Bible that they read. For while the Jews of Palestine, and eastward of that country, constantly used the original Hebrew Scriptures, only rendered into Aramaic at the very moment they were read; the Jews of Alexandria, and generally in the countries west of the Holy Land, seem not to have known the Hebrew, even in the synagogues, and to have used only the Greek Septuagint translation.

As Greek was the tongue of their Syrian oppressors in the time of the Maccabees, the Rabbis looked upon it with aversion, as being especially a profane tongue, fit only for entirely worldly business, but never to be intruded into the synagogue. This feeling was aggravated by the fact that the Jews of Alexandria—where chiefly Greek-speaking Jews abounded—had not only a translation of the Scriptures, which they advanced almost to the same rank as the original: but even a temple of their own, which in some respects was permitted to rival the holy building in Jerusalem.

But, anyhow, Greek was the current language of the world at the time of the appearance of Christianity the language with which a man might travel from end to end of the Roman Empire. And there appears a special providence in the circumstance that the Gospel was sent forth at the very time when there was thus a universal language, in which to convey it. It was necessary to the free circulation of the message, that it should be written in the speech of the Empire, not in some local dialect. And the Grecians or Hellenists, though despised by the Palestine Jews, appear certainly, by means both of their more common tongue, and also of their greater enlightenment, to have been the part of Israel that most generally embraced the Gospel, and carried it into distant lands, away from its original cradle in Judea and Galilee. W. H. J.

Latter-Day Saints

We insert the following letter, which has been sent to us for this purpose, in the hope that the Satan-deluded author of the pamphlet referred to, and his approving readers may see it, peruse it, and take warning ere it be too late.

2, Little's Lane, Wolverhampton, 7 Oct., 1856.

To Mr. Charles F. Jones.

Sir—Having recently received from you a very singular pamphlet, called “Marriage and Morals in Utah,” I am constrained to say a few words upon it to you. This I do both as a Christian man, and as a servant of the Lord; not as being appointed to any office, or as giving forth the sentiments of any class of persons.

Observe, I do not write in the tone of offense, or as one offended, but with much pain and sorrow of heart that anything so defiling and injurious to the truth should have emanated from any class of persons calling themselves “saints” (holy persons), and should ever have been wickedly fathered upon the character of the ever blessed God, the object of all true adoration and worship.

In this pamphlet I am pained to observe that there is nothing said about what can give relief to a troubled conscience; about the calling of “saints” to heaven, and their walking worthy of that “calling;” and about the person and work of the Son of God: but only about the perpetuation of our species, and the desire to get possession of as wide a space of the earth as possible; as if our whole destiny and need were met in such carnal wretched pursuits as these. Is it not monstrous that anything so low and groveling can occupy “saints” (and that too in laying down principles for the government of a new state), and can be made the subject of their teaching? How suited to inflame the passions of the carnal heart, from the dominion of which Jesus came to deliver us.

And because a species of polygamy was permitted in early times, yet after its condemnation by our Lind Jesus Christ (after the folly and sin of man have made his own desire manifest) it is assumed in this pamphlet, that polygamy is still to continue; and to this abominable adultery is added. It is further intimated that this is what is meant by the “everlasting covenant,” although it is quite plain that that covenant had to do with the earth, and that even to this day it has not received its fall accomplishment. “Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made, He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ,” Gal. 3:16. “But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son to redeem,” &c., 4:4-6. Is it, then, more wives, or redemption, that poor, fallen, and degraded man wants? And yet (alas for the blindness of such writers! it is taught in this pamphlet, that marriage, and the earth are what we are to be occupied about, and not redemption. And when God says to the “saints” at Corinth, 2 Cor. 5:17, “Old things are passed away, behold all thing, are become new"; i.e., of course, only to real Christians. Here are other self-called “saints,” according to your pamphlet teaching that it is the old creature we are to be occupied about. With you it is the old Adam, the earth, and more wives; with God it is the new creature, the Second Adam, the Lord from heaven, 1 Cor. 15:47. Does such a perversion of the truth come from heaven or hell?

Sir, it is shocking to father such sentiments as these upon a holy God, “who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and who cannot look upon sin"! And were I not instructed from Holy Scriptures to believe that such thing would come in these “last days,” I should indeed wonder that hell itself could ever invent things so truly wicked and defiling as those recommended in your pamphlet. Let me solemnly remind you of what is said of false prophets and teachers: “To the law, and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light (morning, see margin) in them,” Isa. 8:20. Such doctrine is not of the morning, but is of the night and “darkness,” John 3:20, 21. “If any man, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel than that which I have preached... let him be accursed,” Gal. 1:8.

Let “marriage and morals in Utah” be what they may, it will soon be seen that “many will come and say, Lord! Lord! open to us... but then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me,” &c. Matt. 7:15-23. And further on in time, “the heavens will pass away, and the elements melt with fervent heat,” &c.-2 Peter 3:10. We want something that will secure us then and now! What have marriage and morals to do with meeting the need of the human conscience, furnishing an adequate object for newborn affections, and lifting a poor soul into the presence of God, and giving him the assurance that God loves him in Jesus?

I could say much more, but forbear, praying that a holy and merciful God may rebuke the daring impiety of the Mormons, and in His great mercy rescue them from their delusion. “If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them who are lost.” —2 Cor. 4:3, 4. With proper estimation suited to the case, I am, Sir, yours truly, RICHARD TUNLEY,

Life and Righteousness

“IF you whitewash your cabin, it gets dirty again, and you must give it another coating. And lo I it gets dirty again. So it is with confession and absolution (so far as that goes). Trespasses and sins return, and you go again; and so it goes on like the whitewashing.

Now ask any one that is anxious to please God, and whose sins are a real trouble to them, whether this is not so. Is it not, therefore, a poor remedy that never brings a surer cure?

“But if the walls of your cabin had a pure and living cleanness in them, would they not be freed continually from this growing dirt, and be purified continually.

“So it is with the heart that receives Christ into it by faith, and loves to have Him there, that looks to Him as the true and living righteousness given to us freely of God. Such a one shall find a living cleanness springing up in their heart, purifying them continually, and they rejoice in Him who bore all their sins.”

YOUR result in the tract paper (i.e., fourth paragraph) is all right, but the third seems to me to confound a little the water and the blood. We have both in Christ. Living cleanness is practical, but does not cleanse from guilt, though the two cannot be separated, because Christ is both, and cannot be the one without being the other. But one is not the other; and if an exercised and troubled conscience had to find the “living cleanness quite white” in order to know forgiveness (i.e., non-imputation), the soul of such an one might be perplexed and cast down, as is often the case. It is mixing internal and living righteousness with non-imputation.

Being quickened with Christ, I have part in the righteousness in which He is before God; but the working and effect of that life is not the measure of that righteousness before God, nor for peace of conscience. Conscience will be exercised where the Spirit is, as to the living righteousness; but it rests on Christ as its unchanging righteousness before God. We are righteous by faith objectively before God, not subjectively by experience, though there will be experience according to the working and judgment of the Holy Ghost in him who is righteous by faith. The Holy Ghost witnesses to one and works the other in us, or refuses inconsistencies contrary to it, But it carries on this moral discipline within in those that are at peace through the other: otherwise judgment of failure always puts us, and must put us, under law.

Whenever we believe on Christ, or on Him that raised Him up, righteousness is imputed to us. It is not a question of progress; it is always simply true of the believer as such. It is God's judgment on his behalf of the value of Christ's work, and His position as risen before Him. But grace reigning by righteousness is the principle on which the whole matter rests. It is the principle of Christianity.

Righteousness does not reign: it will in the day of judgment. Grace reigns yet. God cannot but maintain righteousness; but Christ has accomplished it in a divine way, and it is settled forever in heaven, and this not for any temporal blessing or particular promise, but for eternal life. Grace reigns. Sin has reigned through man unto death. Had righteousness thus reigned, it was everlasting ruin. Now God, who is love, has had His work, and grace reigns and righteousness has now been established—divine righteousness through Christ. Believing on “Him that raised Him” is not merely a confidence in power to be employed (as Abraham), but in power already employed in deliverance—already accomplished in the very place and matter of our bondage. It is a God of love who has come down in such sort in power to our estate to take us out of it in Christ. God acts in love and power; and the work of deliverance by it is accomplished.

But death for offenses and resurrection for justification is not a stage past; it is a work done outside us of eternal efficacy. No doubt of the grace that reigns through it; for now, righteousness being accomplished and established for us, love is no longer straitened, as it was till God's claim of death was satisfied and Christ baptized with that baptism. And grace reigns through righteousness, and all blessings, even to the fullness of glory, flow from and are dependent on this.

But Rom. 4 gives us the same basis: only here we have the source and principle which was at work and has triumphed so as to have all its own way in this time, and govern forever in them who are brought in by it. God and His work have taken the place of man and his, as the ground of our relationship with God. Hence, of course, all blessings flow.

The Lord Jesus in John 11-12

These chapters show us in what different channels the Lord's thoughts flowed from those of the heart of man. His ideas, so to speak, of misery and of happiness, were so different from what man's naturally are.

The eleventh chapter opens with a scene of human misery. The dear family at Bethany are visited with sickness, and the voice of health and thanksgiving in their dwelling has to yield to mourning, lamentation, and woe. But He, who of all had the largest and tenderest sympathies, is the calmest among them; for He carried with Him that foresight of resurrection, which made Him overlook the chamber of sickness, and the grave of death.

When Jesus heard that Lazarus was sick, He abode two days longer in the place where He was. But when that sickness ends in death, He begins His journey in the full and bright prospect of resurrection. And this makes His journey steady and undisturbed. And, as He approaches the scene of sorrow, His action is still the same. He replies again and again to the passion of Martha's soul, from that place where the knowledge of a power that was beyond that of death had, in all serenity, seated Him And though He have to move still onward, there is no haste. For on Mary's arrival, He is still in the same place where Martha had met Him. And the issue, as I need not say, comes in due season to vindicate this stillness of His heart, and this apparent tardiness of His journey.

Thus was it with Jesus here. The path of Jesus was His own. When man was bowed down in sorrow at the thought of death, He was lifted up in the sunshine of resurrection.

But the sense of resurrection, though it give this peculiar current to the thoughts of Jesus, left His heart still alive to the sorrows of others. For His was not indifference, but elevation. And such is the way of faith always. Jesus weeps with the weeping of Mary and her company. His whole soul was in the sunshine of those deathless regions, which lay far away from the tomb of Bethany; but it could visit the valley of tears, and weep there with those that wept.

But again. When man was lifted up in the expectation of something good and brilliant in the earth, His soul was full of the holy certainty that death awaits all here, however promising or pleasurable; and that honor and prosperity must be hoped for only in other and higher regions. The twelfth chapter shows us this.

When they heard of the raising of Lazarus, much people flocked together from Bethany to Jerusalem, and at once hailed Him as the King of Israel. They would fain go up with Him to the Feast of Tabernacles, and antedate the age of glory, seating Him in the honors and joys of the kingdom. The Greeks also take their place with Israel in such an hour. Through Philip, as taking hold of the skirt of a Jew, (Zech. 8) they would see Jesus and worship. But in the midst of all this Jesus Himself sits solitary. He knows that earth is not the place for all this festivation and keeping of holy day. His spirit muses on death, while their thoughts were full of a kingdom with its attendant honors and pleasures. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.”

Such was the peculiar path of the spirit of Jesus. Resurrection was everything to him. it was His relief amid the sorrows of life, and His object amid the promises and prospects of the world. It gave His soul a calm sunshine, when dark and heavy clouds had gathered over Bethany; it moderated and separated His affections, when the brilliant glare of a festive day was lighting up the way from thence to Jerusalem. The thought of it sanctified His mind equally amid griefs and enjoyments around. Resurrection was everything to Him. It made Him a perfect pattern of that fine principle of the Spirit of God: “Let him that weepeth be as if he wept not, and he that rejoiceth as though he rejoiced not.”

O for a little more of the same mind in us, beloved! — a little more of this elevation above the passing conditions and circumstances of life!

May the faith and hope of the Gospel, through the working of the indwelling Spirit, form the happiness and prospects of our hearts!

The Lord Returning From the Wedding

IV. Luke 12:36. It is asked whether this verse coincides, or is to be connected, with the parable of the virgins in Matt. 25. It would rather seem to be a comparison to show the responsibility of the saints and the grace of the Lord; but it is not a history or prophecy thrown into parabolic form, as we have in Matt. 25, and therefore a comparison with the virgins would be apt to mislead.

Luke 19-21

The Lord sets himself to make it appear that Jerusalem was not ready for the kingdom. He tests her state in a way that gives her every advantage, entering in full royal dignity.

Jerusalem meets Him with a cold repulse; and the more He is frustrated, the more her unpreparedness for the kingdom is proved. Instead of displaying His glory there, He weeps, and pronounces her doom. Ch. 20 accumulates the evidence of this moral unpreparedness; and then ch. 21, exhibits the long season of judgment which must precede the kingdom.

Some Account of Manuscripts

No doubt the most ancient writing material was stone. This was the substance that most readily presented itself; when men were rather anxious to preserve indestructible records than to multiply copies. Probably the account of altars being built, and of a name being solemnly imposed upon them—as when Laban and Jacob parted in mount Gilead—may refer to the inscriptions then cut on the stone, which was to serve as a memorial. At any rate we have positive information that in the oldest known documents that were intended as books, viz., the commandments received by Moses from Jehovah, were engraved on stone.

No material could have been more durable. But it was at the same time, costly and cumbrous. There are inscriptions in Egypt of a very hoar antiquity indeed, reaching up perhaps to the very dawn of human postdiluvian history; but then they are on the tombs of kings, demanding a royal treasury for their execution, and a royal sepulcher for their place. Where stone was lacking, as in the plains of the Tigris and Euphrates, men were driven to adopt other expedients, and we find at Nineveh and Babylon, no longer inscriptions carved in rock, but impressions stamped in clay.

From a very early period—we cannot say when—leather must have come into use, as making books at least more portable than the stone or the clay. Nothing was more likely to suggest itself; and in all probability the rolls occasionally mentioned in the Bible were made of leather. Bark of trees is said to have served for books; and it is affirmed that the Latin word Liberwhence we derive many words in our own language -was originally this inner bark. Allied to this last was the better-known and more widely-used papyrus, furnished by a kind of reed that is almost peculiar to the Nile, and which certainly came into very early use. For, however fragile the papyrus books may appear, there are some in the British Museum, to which is assigned an age that reaches back to the time of the Exodus.

The export of papyrus seems to have formed a considerable item in the trade of Egypt. And the Ptolemrean dynasty boasted of being at once the patrons of literature, and the owners of the most convenient material for writing. Papyrus was probably cheap and readily obtained. But a new, a more expensive, and a far more valuable material had come to be known a few generations before the Christian era, destined to preserve some of the most precious documents of that era. Without parchment, it may be questioned whether the Scriptures would have come to us in the abundant quantity of copies that we possess. Probably on a less expensive sheet the same pains would not have been taken to make those copies accurate.

About the early half of the second century before Christ, when the Romans were engaged in contesting the empire of Eastern Europe with the kings of Macedonia, there arose out of the ruins of some of the larger fragments of Alexander's dominions, a small kingdom in the north-west of Asia Minor, that owed much of its fortune to the favor of the Romans, and perhaps for that reason incurred the suspicion and dislike of its neighbors. It was called the kingdom of Pergamos, from the city of that name, afterward immortalized as the seat of one of the seven churches which the apostle addressed in the beginning of his apocalypse. A town still stands on or near the ancient site, preserving in the name of Bergamo the recollection of Pergamos.

The kings who ruled there imitated the Ptolemies in patronizing learning, and founding a library. They excited, in consequence, the jealousy of the Egyptian sovereigns; one of whom, Ptolemy Epiphanes, about 190 B.C., in order to arrest the growth of a library that bade fair to rival that of Alexandria, prohibited the exportation of papyrus. Thereupon, the king of Pergamos, driven to his own resources, encouraged the invention of a new writing material. And a peculiar preparation of skins became known, called, from Pergamos, Charta Pergamene, or parchment.

This is the story, which has been sometimes doubted. But at any rate, it was in Pergamos that the parchment attained its greatest celebrity, and from that city it certainly took its name. Parchment, and its finer kind, vellum, have ever since retained the renown of uniting a convenient form and surface with a tolerably imperishable nature. Nothing but the cost, ever prevented this becoming the one material for books. The story of papyrus being no longer exported from Egypt may be true. But if so, the prohibition could only have been temporary; for papyrus was certainly used in Italy, and without doubt, elsewhere also. At a later epoch, as we know from the discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum, and indeed down to the Arabian occupation of Egypt in the seventh century, papyrus still seems to have been the ordinary substance for writing in most parts of Europe.

The seizure of Egypt, however, by the Mahommedans, is said to have stopped the use of papyrus thenceforward forever. It is not likely that it was known at any time afterward. Soon there came in the dark ages, when almost all records of the ancient civilization seemed about to perish; and only the monasteries still preserved some few valued treasures of literature. Parchment became now the only material for writing, and, little as it was required, it rose in price: so that it was considered a great possession. We are told of a certain Gui, Count of Nevers, presenting to the Chartreux of Paris, a service of plate, and of the monks asking for parchment instead. Now also arose the custom of erasing what was written on old parchment, and of re-writing something on it of more immediate interest. In this way, doubtless, many relics of antiquity have disappeared. While, from the imperfect manner in which the old writing was sometimes effaced, it has occasionally been recovered. A manuscript thus restored, from under the second writing above it, is called a palimpsest, and a codex rescriptus. There is, for instance, in the British Museum, one of the oldest known manuscripts of Homer's poems thus resuscitated. Recently Cardinal Angelo Mai discovered in the Vatican Library of Rome a lost treatise of Cicero de Republica, over which had been written a commentary of St. Augustine on the Psalms. And one of the most precious existing MSS. of the New Testament is now in Paris, over which had been written the works of the Syrian father Ephraim. The want of something cheaper than parchment was soon met by the discovery of paper; which seems to have come gradually, and as it were imperceptibly, into use. There is no evidence that cotton paper was used in Europe earlier than the 9th century; while that made from linen was not known before the 12Th. In this case, as in many other European discoveries, the Chinese are said to have preceded us, though without ever making there inventions very extensively useful. It must be also clearly recollected that the newly-discovered material was supposed to be in the place of the papyrus which was gone: as the name of the ancient reed-made papyrus was quickly applied to the paler made from the cotton or the linen.

The quality of the material upon which any manuscript may be written, goes of course a considerable way in determining its age. The parchment of one century is not the same as that of another. Nothing written on cotton paper can be older than Charlemagne; and nothing on linen paper, than William the Conqueror. Moreover the quality of the material decided most unerringly the kind of characters traced, and so gives us a corroborating testimony to the age of a document.

The characters of every branch of the three great languages, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, were all originally much the same. Many of our own printed capital letters approach most nearly to the oldest known types of the Phoenician and the Greek alphabets. They were generally hard, and composed of straight lines; indicating that they had first been cut upon stone; just as the cuneiform characters of Nineveh and Babylon are precisely such as would be stamped on clay with the blunt end of a style.

From the ancient Phoenician type, two chief branches divided: the ancient Greek and the ancient Hebrew character. The former are represented almost exactly by the capital Greek letters now in use; while the latter have no living representatives, but are known by inscriptions on coins of the Maccaban dynasties, and on the ruins of Palmra: for the Greek small letters, and the Hebrew square characters, are comparatively modern.

All the ancient Greek manuscripts are therefore written only with the capital, or, as they are called, the uncial letters; being those which would naturally be formed by any one writing carefully on a valuable parchment. But with the use of paper, a new letter became known, viz., what we call the small letter, or which is also called the cursive character. This small Greek letter was absolutely unknown before the use of paper was discovered. Therefore every manuscript so written is certainly of a date posterior to the age of Charlemagne.

That age was one of considerable activity, and of vigorous effort to escape from the gloom that was setting about Europe. One sign of that activity was the use of paper for the quicker and cheaper writing then demanded. Whether from the use of a cheaper material, or because of the need of quickness, it is certain that men then began to write more rapidly and carelessly, and could no longer wait to form the careful uncial or capital letter, but, by making them quickly, contracted them into the cursive or small characters, which bore about the same relation to the unicials as our hand-writing now does to our printing. And these small letters were not the well-formed elegant things turned out by our modern type foundries: they were irregular, and ugly, and illegible, differing very much in different manuscripts; so that, even when they came to be printed, it was some time before the printers made them otherwise than had been exhibited in the scrawls of the 13th and 14th centuries. We have begun to make them more regularly and carefully, and have eschewed all those abominable contractions in which the early printers delighted. But still it ought to be borne in mind, as a fact not very generally known, that our small Greek letters, now printed, are really more carefully formed from the bad writing of the manuscripts just anterior to the discovery of printing; and that this bad writing was only a hurried way of dashing through the uncial or capital letters, such as we see on the classical monuments, and in the parchment MSS.

In the case of the Hebrew letters, we have an entirely new mode of proceeding. There are no Hebrew MSS. in existence older than the 10th century, that same age which saw the discovery of paper and the use of small cursive letters. The only ancient monuments of the old Hebrew letter—such as the coins of the Maccabees—a coin of Bar Cochab—and the inscriptions at Palmra—are not the same as the present beautiful square Hebrew character.

We are, therefore, irresistibly driven to the conclusion that these elegant letters come from the schools of Babylon and Tiberias, where the doctors of the post-Christian dispersion so long congregated, and which were broken up about the 10th century—that is, about the time of the oldest document in which these square letters are found. They are precisely of the form which painstaking scrupulous men, like the masoretic doctors of Babylon, would make out of the harder and more irregular letters hitherto used. And, indeed, the rise of these specimens of calligraphy is almost contemporary with the rise of the ecclesiastical or black letter in Europe, in the more valuable MSS. which the hardworking Monks painted, rather than wrote. Formerly there was a current opinion that the Jews at the Babylonish captivity, in Daniel's and Ezra's time, gave up their own letters and adopted those of their masters. And so the square characters came to be called Chaldean. The improbability and the baselessness of the story, never seem to have struck any one. But as soon as it was discovered that the Babylonians never used this letter, the story was given up. So likewise, when it is known that these square characters had no existence before what is also called the Captivity—in that period when the Babylonian Jews were governed, under the Sassanians and the Caliphs, by their ow n Prince of the Captivity—there can be little doubt that this period saw the invention of the square characters; and that the story of the adoption of them in the time of Ezra, really arose from confounding together the first and the second captivities at Babylon. W. H. J.

Notes of a Lecture on Matthew 13

The part of the subject which will occupy us this evening, beloved friends, in treating of the coming again of our beloved Lord, is the sorrowful side of it. What we had before us in the previous lectures was the blessings and joys of the saints, founded on the sure promise of Christ Himself that He would come again; and we found that their looking for the fulfillment of that promise was connected with their every thought and action. But it is of the greatest importance that we should look at this sorrowful side as well as the other, that man may see the consequence and effect of his responsibility.

The coming of Christ has a double aspect. As regards the professing church, and the world at large too, Scripture speaks of His appearing; because then it is that the result of their responsibility is manifested. As regards the body of Christ, it speaks of His coming, and our taking up to Himself. It is one thing to own the church as a responsible body in the world—another thing to look at it as one with Him. When we turn to that which has been set by God as a system down here, and see the failure of it, it is to be judged in respect of that failure as every system set up by God has been—(each having been first established on the footing of man's responsibility).

There is never anything else but failure exhibited in man. Look all through the Scriptures, where we have man's history from the very beginning of creation, and we find nothing but failure. Adam most signally failed in what God had entrusted him with. And then when law was given, even before Moses came down from the mount, man had made the golden calf to worship it. So when Aaron and his sons were consecrated, on the eighth day, the first day of their service, they offered strange fire: and, as a consequence, the free and constant entrance of Aaron into the holy place was stopped. Solomon, the son of David, was given glory and riches by God, but his heart was turned from Him by strange wives, and he fell into idolatry, and the kingdom was divided. God trusts Nebuchadnezzar with power, and he is the head of gold among the Gentiles: he gets into pride, and throws the saints into the fire; he loses his reason and senses for seven years (a figure of the Gentile empires), and eats grass like an ox. So with everything. So it is with the church, and man cannot mend it. Grievous wolves, says Paul, will come in after my decease; and there will be a falling away, and then Antichrist be fully revealed. The church itself as a system, trusted to man's responsibility, has been all a failure.

All was set up in the first Adam, who has failed. All will be made good in the second Adam, who is perfect, and has overcome. But it is hard to get saints to lay hold of the entirely new position in which all is set by redemption, an l by the resurrection of Christ. The first Adam failed, and was cast out. The second Adam, perfect, is come into a better paradise. So of everything. In the same way, law, which man broke, will be written on his heart. Christ will be the true Son of David. Christ will rise to reign over the Gentiles. So, as the church has failed, He will yet be glorified in His saints, and admired in all them that believe. In each position in which God has tried man what Scripture teaches us is that man has failed in his responsibility, and that God's plans will go on. in His patient mercy till all is fulfilled in Christ.

If we now turn to this responsibility, we shall find there are two subjects before us as engaged in it: the professing church is one; power in the earth, shown in the beasts, is the other. Both are found corrupt, or at open enmity with God; that which is called the church will be utterly rejected of God—spewed out. The thing which Scripture teaches us is, not that we shall fill the world with blessing, but entirely the contrary. The evil introduced by Satan where Christianity had been planted, will never be remedied until the harvest. Such a thought is humbling, but gives no ground for discouragement, for Christ is ever faithful. It is the occasion, dear friends, for those who have the grace of God to walk more in accordance with it. But it is a solemn thing, if what we have to look forward to is the cutting off of the professing church.

Geographically speaking, Christianity was more widely spread in the sixth century than now; the world as then known was more acquainted with the Gospel than it is now. Whatever man may say about progress and the like, a great part of what was then the Christian world, and heard of Christ, is now overrun by Mohammedanism or Popery; and, where that is not so, how far has infidelity and Puseyism prevailed! But it is this very thing that calls for earnestness in those who have the Spirit of God. He is surely working very specially in these days; and in the tide of evil we have the strongest possible motive for energy and activity. It is always right, but the inroad of evil specially calls for it, as in the days of Noah, in the sense of approaching judgment. The false idea of converting the world may give a stimulus for a time, but it destroys the solemn sense of what God is, and enfeebles the authority of God's word, which gives no such hope. When it is gradually found, too, that evil is growing up, and that the world is not converted, the reaction tends to subvert the faith, and cast into infidelity.

The evil which works now was declared from the beginning, and will continue its course (such is the declaration of Scripture) till God interferes—will not be remedied until the harvest. Such is the clear teaching of the parable I have to read to you. It is a similitude of the kingdom of heaven.

People very often take the kingdom of heaven as if it was the same thing as the church of God; but this is no way the case, though those who compose the church are in the kingdom. Supposing for a moment that Christ had not been rejected, the kingdom would have been set up on earth. It could not be so, no doubt, but it shows the difference between the kingdom and the church. As it was, the kingdom of God was there in the person of Christ, the King. Only as He was on earth, it was not the kingdom of heaven. But Christ being rejected, He could not take it outwardly then, but ascended on high. Thus the sphere of the rule of Christ is in heaven. The heavens rule, and the kingdom is always the kingdom of heaven, because the king is in heaven; only at the end it will be subdivided, so to speak, into the kingdom of our Father, the heavenly part, and the kingdom of the Son of man, the earthly part. If we understand the kingdom of heaven as the rule of Christ, when the king is in heaven, it is very simple. If Christ had set up a kingdom when He was with the Jews, it would not have been the kingdom of heaven, because He was not in heaven. Hence, it is said, “the kingdom of God is among you,” but “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

The gospel is the only means we have of gathering souls into the kingdom, and such are properly the children of the kingdom; but, within its limits, Satan works and sows tares, and they are in the kingdom. Take Popery, Mohammedanism, all manner of heretics: these are tares which have been sown where the good seed had been. Church means, or is rather, simply an assembly—an idea which has nothing to do with the thought of a kingdom. The parable I did not read, where we have Christ sowing the good seed, is not a similitude of the kingdom of heaven. A kingdom is a sphere where one rules as king. Christ is simply there sowing the word in men's hearts. It does not describe the kingdom of heaven, nor even the kingdom begun by the king being on earth; it is individual in its character.

The moment He comes to this and the two following parables, we have a similitude of the kingdom of heaven. They describe the outward result in this world of the fact of Christ the King's being in heaven. You will remark that these are spoken to the multitude; the three last, and the explanation of the tares and wheat, to the disciples, showing the mind and purpose of God—what divine intelligence knows and does, not mere public result in the world. The tares and wheat show the outward result, in the world, of the Gospel. In the next, it becomes a great tree—a great tree, in Scripture, signifying great power. That is what Christianity became in the world from a little seed—a great political power, like the kingdoms of the world. The next shows it as a doctrine pervading a mass of measured extent, as a little leaven penetrates through the lump of dough.

Then the Lord goes into the house, and explains God's mind about these things. (Verse 36.) “Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house, and his disciples came unto him, saying, Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field.” The servants inquire if they should gather the fares up. They are forbidden to do it. Our part is not judgment or excision in this world. We have not to root out evil out of the world by persecution. We have seen often that the wheat was rooted up. They must grow in the field, that is the world, till harvest. “But he said, nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest.” We learn from this, not only that Christianity does not spread every where, but that where it does spread, it becomes corrupted. And, if we look at the state of Christendom, we cannot but see that this is the case. We see how the tares have been sown and sprung up, how false doctrines have crept in, Popery, and all kinds of errors. Then our Lord, having sent the multitude away, and gone into the house, explained the parable to his disciples.

You will now remark that, as I have said, in these parables, with the explanation of the first, you have two distinct things—the outward result, and the unfolding of God's design in it. Thus, with regard to the grain of mustard seed, you have the outward result—it becomes a great tree, which, in Scripture, is simply a great public power. The king of Assyria is represented as a great tree. So Pharaoh is represented as a great tree. And Nebuchadnezzar was a great tree, which was hewn down, but whose stump and roots were left in the earth. In a word, it means simply a great power. And that was what Christianity became in the world—the greatest power in it. The figure in the parable does not raise the question whether it was good or bad, but simply represents that it was a great public power in the world. The little seed of the truth, sown at the first, took root, and grew up to be a great tree. So in the case of the leaven, working within a certain sphere, represented by three measures of meal—it worked there until the whole was leavened. The doctrines of Christianity penetrate through the whole. But no reference is there made to godliness or sanctity. Christianity is represented as a public, outward thing, making its way in the world. But, having sent the multitude away, the Lord takes up an entirely different thing, and explains, not the outward effect, but God's mind in the transactions represented by these parables. And He begins by explaining the parable of the tares of the field. Verse 34, “All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables.... Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house: and his disciples came unto him, saying, Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field. He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man: the field is the world.”

Mark how perfectly absurd it is to think, as some do, that it is the Church which is here spoken of. The Son of man comes to sow the gospel, the word of God, in the world—not in the Church. The Church has received it already. The Church is composed of those who professedly or really, as the case may be, have already received the good seed. He does not sow it in the Church, which would be repeating what had been done before, but in the world. “The field is the world,” and nothing can be more absurd than to apply this to the Church, or to bring it up in connection with any Church question.

“The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one.” It is not that the wheat is spoiled. The Lord will gather that and have it in His garner. But the crop is spoiled. Christianity, as an outward thing in the world, has been corrupted, through the prevalence of all kinds of error and wickedness. “The enemy that sowed them is the devil: the harvest is the end of the world,” that is, “of the age.” It is not the end of the world, in the ordinary sense, that is spoken of; it is “the end of the age:” there is no dispute about that for any one acquainted with the original: “And the reapers are the angels. As, therefore, the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world” (“of this age”). “The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” That is, the mischief which Satan has done will go on until the Lord executes righteous judgment on the world. The corruption of Christianity, the spoiling of the crop—not of the wheat, because God takes care of that, and gathers it into His garner—but of the crop (the public, outward thing, which Satan has set himself to corrupt and spoil) will go on until the harvest.

And indeed on this point we get a little more precise information. The first thing, we learn, will be the gathering together of the tares (those who have grown up as the fruit of the corrupt principles, sown by Satan where the Gospel had been planted) in bundles to be burned. And then He gathers His wheat into His garner—takes His saints to be with Himself. This is all the parable states. The explanation goes farther, and gives the manifested result when Jesus shall appear. “Then shall the righteous shine forth,” —they have been gathered already— “then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father,” as the wicked are cast into a furnace of fire, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. We have first, then, the tares growing till harvest, and then the Lord gathers out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity. There is much instruction here, but I will not detain you now with entering into more than the general idea. We have this, however, very distinctly brought before us, that while the Lord gets His own wheat in the garner, yet the crop sown in the world is spoiled; while men slept, the devil comes and spoils the plan by sowing false principles of Judaism, and legalism, and immorality or Antinomianism, and false doctrines about Christ. By all these things the crop is spoiled, and that is never mended in the world until judgment comes.

You will now see, by comparing other passages, that the Church, having a certain responsibility entrusted to her in the earth, has not fulfilled what that responsibility made incumbent upon her, and comes under judgment. Turn to Rom. 11 and you will see distinctly this principle laid down. As to the facts, we shall refer to other passages. There, after speaking of the cutting off of the Jews, the Apostle says: “Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee. Thou wilt say then, the branches were broken off, that I might be grafted in. Well, because of unbelief they were broken off; and thou standest by faith. Be not high-minded, but fear. For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee. Behold, therefore, the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.——-For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.” It is exactly through being wise in its own conceit that the professing Church has fallen. It has looked on the Jews as entirely set aside, forgetting that “the gifts and calling of God are without repentance” —that He never changes His mind—that, though He can create and then destroy, He never sets aside His own design and purpose; and that, God having called the Jews as a nation, He never will lay aside that purpose. But the Church has been wise in their own conceits, thinking that the Jews are set aside, and that the Church never can be.

But we shall find exactly fulfilled, as regards the Church as an outward thing in the world, what is stated in this chapter, that, if it continue not in God's goodness, it will be cut off This is the specific instruction contained in this passage, with reference to those brought in by faith, after the natural branches were broken off, that is, Christendom, that they are placed on this ground; that, if they do not continue in God's goodness, they will be cut off like the Jews. The only question is, how long forbearance may be extended to them. “Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off that I might be grafted in.” Quite true, the Apostle replies, but “became of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not high-minded, but fear. For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee. Behold, therefore, the goodness and severity of God.” &c. Now, what I ask is this: has the professing Church continued in God's goodness? Do we not see Popery and Mohammedanism prevalent where Christianity was originally planted? Have they continued, then, in God's goodness? There is nothing said about being restored. That will not do; what is required is to “continue.” It is the same as when a man who has broken law, says, “I will do right for the future.” That does not meet the law's claims; he has not “continued in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.” And I ask, has the Church continued in God's goodness? Is that which we now see in Christendom what God set up in His Church in the beginning, or anything like it? Has not the professing Church turned to ceremonies and sacraments, and all kinds of things other than Christ, in order to be saved by them? They have not continued in God's goodness. You can see that most plainly. Our own consciousness testifies to it. But, if they continue not in God's goodness, the whole of Christendom, the Apostle says, will be cut off, and the Jews will be grafted in again. There cannot be the least doubt of that. “And they also, if they abide not in unbelief, shall be grafted in; for God is able to graft them in again.” — “For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.” As soon as the Lord has gathered the real Church of God, and taken them up to heaven, He sets up the Jews again.

Turn now to the positive testimony. What I have been reading is conditional; it shows what will take place, if they continue not in God's goodness. We shall see now if they have continued. You will find that Jude brings it out in a very striking way, because he takes up the whole history of Christianity from beginning to end. “Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called” —that is, the true saints— “Mercy unto you, and peace, and love, be multiplied. Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.” That is, I would have written in order that you may be built up in the truth, but through the coming in of evil I am obliged to exhort you that you should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. “For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation; ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.”

We see, then, the cause of the falling away-that already in Jude's time these men had crept in unawares into the Church of God, and were bringing in corruption. And he warns them that the same thing had happened in the case of Israel, when brought out of Egypt, and had caused them to fall in the wilderness: they had not maintained faithfulness. He refers them also to the case of the angels who kept not their first estate, because the principle of apostasy crept in. And mark the way in which he speaks of these men that had crept in unawares, of these tares that Satan had sown. Look at verse 14, “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints to execute judgment upon all; and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”

That is, under the inspiration of the prophetic Spirit of God, he sees the mischief and evil done by these persons, and sees that it was to grow and ripen up to judgment, as we shall soon see appears elsewhere. And he tells the saints that the mischief has begun, and therefore he warns them that they “should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.” And the Lord executes judgment, because, instead of the world becoming filled with the blessedness of the gospel, the Church has got corrupted. That it is prophesied that the filling the world with blessedness is to be brought about by Israel and not by the Church, you will see, and that very distinctly indeed, when we come to other passages. But here we get a remarkable prophecy, showing that (as in Rom. 11 was declared that, if they did not continue in God's goodness, they should be cut of) they will not continue in God's goodness; and it gives us the history of the Church in the world from the beginning to the end of it, when the Lord shall come with ten thousands of His saints to execute judgment. It is as plain and distinct a declaration as it possibly could be; and you will find that the whole testimony of Scripture concurs, as of course it must concur, in the same truth.

Turn now to Habakkuk, where you have one of these passages which are constantly in people's minds, as showing that the Gospel is to go on and spread until it fills the world. I refer to them merely for the negative purpose of pointing out that they show nothing of the kind. Habakkuk, chap. 2, verse 12: “Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and establisheth a city by iniquity. Behold, is it not of the Lord of hosts that the people shall labor in the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity? For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” The people are all laboring in the fire, and wearying themselves for very vanity, and then the glory comes and fills the earth.

Turn now to other passages, where it is not stated conditionally, or in a general prophetic manner, but where distinct details are given of that which would come about. Turn to 2 Thessalonians, and you will find there the connected details of the course of that of which Jude has already given us the beginning. But the general fact we also have stated in the Philippians, where the apostle says, “I have no man like-minded; for all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's.” That surely was an early period in the history of the Church, to say that Christians were in a state of such decline and decay that they were not seeking the things of Jesus Christ, but their own interest. When we return to second Epistle of Thessalonians we get this very distinctly brought out. “Now we beseech you brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto Him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter, as that the day of Christ (rather of the Lord) is” (not “at hand,” but) here. The expression “at hand” makes it almost impossible to get at the sense of the passage; it means “here or present,” the same word being used as when things “present” are contrasted with things “to come.”

The whole point of the apostle's statement rests on this, that the Thessalonians thought that the day of the Lord was “here” —that it had already come-that their having got into so much dreadful tribulation and persecution proved that it had come. The expression “the day of the Lord at hand” is often made use of as occurring in this passage, while in fact there is nothing of the kind in it. The Thessalonians thought, not that it was at hand, but that it had come, and therefore the apostle says, “Let no man deceive you by any means, for that day shall not come, except there come the falling away first” —that is, a not continuing in God's goodness.

Therefore, as the apostle had stated that, if they did not continue in God's goodness, they would be cut off, we have here the positive revelation or prophecy, that they would not continue in God's goodness, that there would come the falling away, and that the day of the Lord cannot come, until that falling away or apostasy takes place. So it is plain on the face of it, that, in place of the Church continuing in God's goodness, the directly opposite is the case. The apostle shows how the declension goes on— “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come the falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped, so that he sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. Remember ye not that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things And now ye know what withholdeth, that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work.” That is the important point here, that already, as to its general principles, it was going on in the apostle's days. Even then the enemy was at work, sowing tares. Only it was a mystery; it was going on secretly, in a hidden way. There was Judaism, and Antinomianism, making high professions of grace with a corrupt practice, and various other forms of heresy, as the denial that Christ was a real man, &c., all of which are mentioned in Scripture—we do not require to go to church history at all to find them. They denied the humanity, quite as soon as they did the divinity, of the Lord.

We find then that this mystery of iniquity was already at work, in the time of the apostle, and it was then only hindered from going on; it was not to be set aside. The time will come when it will be set aside, when Babylon will be destroyed, but not by the word. I may first refer for a moment to this point. In the book of Revelation (chapter 17) you find that it is the ten horns and the beast which shall destroy the great whore, and burn her with fire, and then men will be given up to even still greater evil—giving their power to the beast; and then judgment.

Returning to the passage in Thessalonians, we find the apostle says— “The mystery of iniquity doth already work; only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.” We get here this very important truth, as regards the responsibility of the church that what was working to corrupt it in the time of the apostle himself would go on, until what hindered the full development of iniquity was removed, and then that wicked would be revealed, &c. That, as I have said, is the very opposite of continuing in God's goodness. It is intimated to us, that what was mysteriously working then would ripen and mature up to the open revelation of the man of sin, whom the Lord will consume and destroy— “Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.” That is the way in which the professing church will be dealt with. Having refused to retain the truth—the real truth of God, God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie— “That they all might be damned, who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”

The Lord then comes and destroys the wicked, the evil being open and evident; it is no longer a mystery. This is for us a very solemn view of God's dealings. It is not the pleasant and bright side. The pleasant bright side is the blessedness the saints will have at the coming of the Lord Jesus, in being gathered together to Him. The apostle says to the saints—you will all be taken up to meet the Lord in the air, and therefore you cannot think that the day of the Lord is here, for that day will not find you here at all. That day is the execution of judgment on ungodly men. It is as if a rebellion were going on at Toronto, and the Queen were to say—I will have all my loyal subjects with me at Montreal first, and then judgment will be executed. And so long as you were not at Montreal, it would be evident that that day of judgment had not arrived yet. That is the reason why, when it is said, Lo, here, and Lo, there, we know it does not apply to us. To a Jew it is different. If you say to a Jew, who is expecting Christ, Lo, here, or Lo, there, it is a snare to him. But, if it is said to us, we can only answer—It is impossible, for we are going up to meet the Lord in the air, not to find him here, and I am not there yet. So he beseeches them by our gathering together to Him not to be troubled as if the day was come.

In this passage then which I have read, you have the positive declaration, that what had begun in the apostle's time goes on, until Christ comes to execute judgment; and you find another distinct and definite declaration of this kind in 1 Timothy chap. 4. “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron.”

Then, in 2 Timothy chap. 3, we have very definitely and distinctly stated what the last days will be. “This know also that in the last days perilous times shall come” —not that the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord (that is a blessed time), but that “in the last days perilous times shall come.” “For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.” That is the character of the last days. There will be a great form of godliness, much superstitious worship, but a denial of the power of godliness. That is not a continuing in God's goodness, when the professing church in the last days, with a great form of godliness, denies the power thereof.

It is a remarkable proof of the power of Satan, that, in the face of these passages, men, wise in their own conceits, will bring reasoning to prove, that they are to go on and fill the whole world with the gospel—that, at the very time that judgments are hastening upon them, men will cherish the expectation of the earth being filled with a widespread blessedness, is the strongest possible evidence of the power of that delusion of which the apostle speaks. It is not that God is not working, and turning men from darkness to light. It was the same before the destruction of Jerusalem; three thousand were converted in a day. If we had three thousand converted in a day now, would it be a proof that the millennium was coming? No, but rather that it was judgment which was coming. It was because the judgment was coming that that happened. It was the Lord's gathering out His saints before the judgment and adding to the Church such as should be saved. And, if He is now working in a special manner to gather out souls, it is not because the gospel is to fill the world, but because judgment is coming upon the professing church.

The apostle shows that the declension will go on, that it will not be set aside. For “evil men and seducers,” he says, “shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.” And then he gives the resource under such circumstances. “But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; and that from a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” It is as much as to say, you cannot trust the Church, which will have but a form of godliness, denying the power—your resource must be the holy scriptures of truth.

You will find, again, how this mystery of iniquity began to work at the very outset, by turning to the second chapter of the first epistle of John, where this very question is treated of. “Little children, it is the last time.” It seems a remarkable thing for the apostle to speak of the very time when Christianity commenced to be diffused as the last time. God's patience has nevertheless continued to go on from that time to this day, for with Him one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. “And as ye have heard that Antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists.” It is not the Antichrist whom he speaks of, but he says that already there were many antichrists—already the mystery of iniquity, the spirit of evil, was working— “whereby we know that it is the last time.” We have seen that the last days are a perilous time; and here we see that the apostle knows it to be the last time, because there are many antichrists. Is it possible then that the last time will be a time when the whole world will be filled with such blessedness as some speak of? The whole testimony of Scripture is as plain as can be to the contrary, “whereby we know it is the last time. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us; but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.” They adopt false principles; their Christianity becomes corrupted; and they go out.

Turn now to Luke 18, which occurs to my mind in connection with this, showing how far the professing church is from continuing in God's goodness (verse 6th)— “And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith. And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you that be will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” That is not like having the world full of the gospel. He puts the question -will there be some individuals still expecting His interference and intervention? but He does not say there will be. The Church will be gone, and the question is-will there be any looking for His interference I will there be any one expecting the Lord to descend on the earth?

It may be well now perhaps to turn to a few passages—because they rest in people's minds, in looking at this subject-about the Gospel being preached to all nations and the like. I believe that this ought to have been done from the beginning by those to whom God hath given grace. But that is not the question. The question is, whether there has not been a failure on the part of the Church, as to the discharge of its responsibility. It is not a question whether they ought to diffuse the gospel—of course they ought. In the sixth century, Christianity was the all but national religion of China, and there are fragments of it there still. The limits of nominal Christendom are now very much contracted from what they were in former times. Formerly they embraced all the north of Africa, and, in a measure, all Asia. Now they are almost confined to Europe, except that in these modern times they include also the scattered populations in America.

Let us turn then to the passages which speak of the prevalence of the gospel. That in Matt. 24 is one of them. “And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then” —not the millennium, but— “shall the end come.” There is nothing here about filling the world with blessedness. But the gospel of the kingdom shall be preached for a witness to all nations, and then will come the end—the judgment, the end of this age. It is not said that the world is to be filled with blessing. To suppose so is being wise in your own conceit. It is said that the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will fill the world, but it is not said that the gospel will, although men, fancying that they have the power to bring it about, speak as if it were the gospel that was to do this.

If you look at Rev. 14 you will find this brought out still more distinctly and clearly, that the end comes when the gospel is sent for a witness to all nations. You often hear the passage quoted to show that the gospel is to be preached to all nations, which is no doubt a blessed truth in its place. But, to see the effect of it, we must take the whole passage: verse 6th, “And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation and kindred and tongue and people, saying, with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come.” It is almost a miracle how people read Scripture without understanding it. Whoever has been in the habit of frequenting public meetings, and listening to speakers from public platforms, must have heard that passage quoted hundreds of times, as if it meant that the Gospel is so to be preached to all nations, that it is to fill the whole world with light, while a moment's consideration would show that this preaching of the Gospel is a precursor of judgments. I shall now refer to the passages which speak of the knowledge of the Lord covering the earth as the waters cover the sea.

But before doing that, let me just quote one passage in Isaiah (chapter 26), where you will see that this is brought, not by the Gospel, but by judgments. Verse 9th: “With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early; for, when thy judgments are in the earth” (not the Gospel, but judgments) “the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.” “Let favor” (that is, grace, or the Gospel) “be shewed to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness.” There must be judgment; the time of harvest must come, as in the parable of the tares. “In the land of uprightness will he deal unjustly, and will not behold the majesty of the Lord. Lord, when thy hand is lifted up” (when He is just going to strike), “they will not see; but they shall see, and be ashamed for their envy at the people; yea, the fire of thine enemies shall devour them.”

Turn now to Habbakuk, where you have one of these passages which are constantly in people's minds, as showing that the Gospel is to go on and spread until it fills the world. I refer to them merely for the negative purpose of pointing out that they show nothing of the kind. Habakkuk, chap. 2, verse 12: “Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and establisheth a city by iniquity. Behold, is it not of the Lord of hosts that the people shall labor in the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity! For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” The people are all laboring in the fire, and wearying themselves for very vanity; and then the glory comes and fills the earth.

Turn now to Numbers—another of the only three passages in which what I am now referring to is spoken of in that way; and, in chapter 14, you will find what the Lord means by filling the earth with His glory. When the people had sinned against the Lord, and murmured against Moses, God said He would destroy them, and Moses then interceded for them. “Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people, according unto the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now. And the Lord said, I have pardoned according to thy word: but as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord. Because all these men which have seen my glory, and my miracles, which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, have tempted me now these ten times, and have not hearkened to my voice, surely they shall not see the land which I swam unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that provoked me see it.” That, of course, is judgment; and the filling of the earth with God's glory here has nothing to do with the Gospel. The Lord will have the whole earth full of His glory, but He does not use the Gospel for that purpose. He does send the Gospel, and urges it upon men with infinite patience and goodness; but they reject it; and then comes judgment.

In one other passage the expression occurs. You will find it in Isa. 11 “But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth; and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb.... They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” —that is when God smites the earth, and slays thee wicked. “And,” the prophecy goes on, “in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, from Assyria and from Egypt,” &c. That is, the Lord gathers the Jews, and slays the wicked; and it is then the earth is full of the knowledge of Jehovah. “And the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off. Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim; but they shall fly upon the shoulders of the Philistines towards the west; they shall spoil them of the east together,” and so on—showing that there is to be an execution of judgment in the earth.

Turn now to Isa. 66, where the glory of the Lord is also spoken of. And, in referring to these passages which are so constantly quoted, it is always an excellent plan to read the context. In this passage the glory of the Lord is brought in by: fire and by sword. Verse 15th, “For, behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and by his sword will the Lord plead with all flesh: and the slain of the Lord shall be many For I know their works and their thoughts: it shall come, that I will gather all nations and tongues, and they shall come and see my glory.” The glory of the Lord here, comes with the execution of judgment; there is nothing of the gospel at all.

You see, then, these three points. First, you have the statement that, after God had sown the good seed, the enemy came and sowed the evil. Then you have the conditional declaration, that the professing Church, if it did not continue in God's goodness, would, as an outward thing, be cut off. Then, further, you have the declaration that that evil, which had begun in the time of the apostles, would go on to the end, the Lord only restraining the public manifestation of it until the time of judgment approached at Christ's coming, the fullness of the Gentiles being come in, and then that wicked would be cut off; also, that in. the last days perilous times would come, and Antichrist would come.

We have seen also that the passages referring to the earth being filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, and the like, are all connected with judgment, and that when favor is showed to the wicked, as in the gospel, he will not learn righteousness.

If you turn to the Revelation, you will get a little more of detail about the falling away, and about what the character of that evil which is at work. But before we quote from the Revelation, let me remark that the two great characters of evil from the beginning have been corruption and violence. Before the deluge, the earth was corrupt before God, and filled with violence. And in the Revelation, “Babylon” is the expression of corruption, while the “beast” is the expression of violence. I cannot, this evening, enter into details as to this part of the subject, but I wish to show you how the one runs into the other. In chap. 17, the expression “the great whore” indicates the power of corruption. At the 15th verse, it is said, “The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues,” —the reference here is to the influence over the nations which a corrupt Christianity has exercised, — “And the ten horns which thou sawest upon and on the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.” Of course, that is not the gospel; it is violence putting an end to corruption. “For God hath put in their hearts to fulfill His will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast.”

It is not when Babylon is destroyed that the kingdom is given to the Son of man. It is given then to the beast. The effect of the destruction of all this corrupt influence of outward, nominal Christianity, of the awful corruption of the Papal system, which was the center of it all, that “Mother of abominations of the earth,” —the effect of the destruction of that, through the hatred and disgust of those connected with it, and disgusted and wearied with it, will be to put the power of the world into the hands of the beast. There is nothing at all here about the gospel. It is the violence of man refusing longer to submit to priestly power. When one reads Scripture, simply desiring to learn what it teaches, he cannot but be surprised how people form from it the systems they do. They take hold of some abstract principle, and, following it out, succeed in finding it in Scripture according to their expectations. In studying the Scriptures, they settle first what the Scriptures should teach, instead of being content to take simply what they do actually state.

Turn now to chapter 16, and you will find more about the time when judgment shall be executed upon Babylon, although we cannot now enter into the various details of it. “And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.” These are the powers of evil. “For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles which go forth unto the kings of the earth, and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. Behold, I come as a thief.” It is the devil who gathers the whole world to that great battle. People may discuss what is meant by the dragon, and the beast, and the false prophet. I have very little doubt on that point; and I may just say, without entering into the details, that the dragon is the power of Satan, that the beast is the Roman Empire, and that the false prophet is the false Messiah at the time of the end.

I do not dwell upon this; but at all events it is perfectly clear that the three unclean spirits, which gather the nations to the battle of the great day of God Almighty, are not the gospel. It is the battle which in Isaiah is said to be with burning and fuel of fire. The nations are gathered to Armageddon, and then comes the judgment. The beast and its horns destroy Babylon, that great corrupt system, and then the beast and the kings of the earth are gathered by evil spirits against the power of Christ, Satan being cast down from heaven.

In chapter 19 of the Revelation, we read that there comes forth on the white horse He who has on His vesture and on His thigh a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords; that the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies are gathered together to make war against Him that sat on the horse, and against His army; “and the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image; these both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone; and the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse.” Thus we get here very distinctly that there is an execution of judgment. And after that—after the execution of judgment, Satan is bound.

Then we have a passage, which is the only ground we have for saying that there is to be a millennium—a thousand years of blessedness. We have seen the general statements that the world will be full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, but that is to be by judgment. But the only proof we have that the period of blessedness is to last a thousand years—the only evidence for this particular character of the glory which is coming—is found in chapter 20 of the Revelation. We have plenty of testimony that there will be a time of blessedness, but this specific character of it is only found here, and that is after the Lord has come as King of kings, and Lord of lords, and executed judgment, and Satan is bound. Satan has been corrupting everything; but, when he is bound, he can no longer do so; and then come the thousand years, and thrones and judgment are given to us. The saints shall judge the world, for so God has revealed in His word.

Are there not many professing Christians who, if you were to say to them, “do you not know you are to judge angels?” would think you were mad? And yet it was to the Corinthians, (who were very far from being the most perfect of Christians, for they were, indeed, going on very hardly,) that this was said. The full import of the connection of the Church with Christ has been almost wholly forgotten. People talk of their hopes of being saved, and of living godly; but the connection of the Church with the second Adam is practically forgotten. The power of redemption, and the high privileges connected with it, are overlooked.

Let us revert for a moment to Revelation, chapter 13, to see how intimately the saints are associated with Christ in that day. We read that the beast and the kings of the earth shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them; for He is Lord of lords, and King of kings; “and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful.” That description does not apply to angels. No doubt He will come with the holy angels; but the expression, “called, and chosen, and faithful,” applies to the saints, who come “arrayed in fine linen, clean and white,” which “is the righteousness of saints” So arrayed, they come with the Lord. We shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air; and when He appears, we shall also appear with Him in glory.

There is another point I wish to show you, although I cannot go into details. I can only touch upon the great principles bearing on the subject we are considering, and pass over them very rapidly. You will remember a passage of sacred history in the time of Elijah, recorded in the Kings. God had seen that there were seven thousand in Israel who had not bowed the knee to Baal, although Elijah had fancied that he only was left, and they sought his life to take it away. Acting under God's authority, Elijah raised the question whether Baal was God, or Jehovah was God, and proceeded to test it by a public demonstration in the face of all the people. And he proposed to test it in this way, that he who answered by fire should be acknowledged as God. Sacrifices accordingly were prepared, and the priests of Baal cried aloud from morning until noon, “O Baal, hear us!” And Elijah mocked them, and said, “Cry aloud, for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is on a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.” And they cried aloud, and cut themselves with knives, until evening, but there was no answer. And then Elijah built an altar, and laid on it the sacrifice, and filled the trench about it with water, and called upon the Lord; and the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and licked up the water that was in the trench; and when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, “The Lord [Jehovah] he is the God; the Lord he is the God.”

Now we find in the Revelation, that the false prophet brings down fire from heaven in the sight of men. It is all lies, of course; but he does it in such a way as to deceive men. The very thing which Elijah did to prove that Jehovah was the true God, the false prophet, or false Messiah, also appears to do—bringing down in the sight of men the very thing which proved Jehovah to be God; and that he succeeds by it in deceiving men, shows that they are given up to strong delusion to believe a lie. This refers to the government of the world, so far as the Jews are concerned.

If you turn to 2 Thessalonians, you will see the same, where Christianity is concerned, in connection with the apostasy: “Then shall that wicked be revealed ... even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan, with all power and signs, and lying wonders.” Of course they are all “lying,” but still they are “powers, and signs, and wonders” —words verbally identical in the original with those used by Peter when he preached of “Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs.” That is, Antichrist does the same things, lying of course, but the same as regards men's apprehension of them, which proved Jesus to be the Christ, and the same things that proved Jehovah to be the true God. By these means he blinds and deceives the people, and leads them away to worship the dragon and the beast. He does this by bringing down fire from heaven and leads them to recognize the false Christ as the true one, by doing the same things—falsely, of course—as Christ had done. You cannot conceive a more awful and solemn thing, than that men should thus be given up to strong delusion to believe a lie, and to be subject to the power of him, whose coming is after the working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonders; and it is not surprising that the apostle should be so impressive in his warning, when he says, “This know, that in the last days perilous times shall come.”

Now, beloved friends, the more you search the Scriptures, the more you will find these great leading principles clearly brought out. But the professing church refuses to see them; and this is connected with what I pointed out at the outset, that everything which in God's great scheme is trusted to man is a failure. It was while man slept, that the enemy came and sowed the tares, and then we have the positive revelation that the church, not continuing in God's goodness, will be cut off. Therefore the notion that the outward church of God, after having become corrupt, will again be set right, is an entire delusion—I say outward Church of God; for, as regards individuals, what is revealed on this point is only a reason for greater faithfulness on their part. That is another question altogether.

As regards the duty of individuals, Scripture gives plenty of directions about that, even when speaking of the last days, when there shall be a form of godliness and a denial of the power thereof. From such, says the Spirit, turn away. It will be with the saints as with Elijah—there never will be a time when individually they will have a greater consciousness of the power of Christ, than in the time of general declension.

That, however, is not the point; the question is as to the outward manifestation and outward effect in the world. Men have comforted themselves with the thought of an invisible Church, forgetting that it is said, “Ye are the light of the world.” Of what value is an invisible light? It is said, “let your light so shine before men;” that is, let your profession of Christianity be so distinct “that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”

And now, beloved friends, take this lesson with you, that, during this time of God's forbearance, until He comes forth to execute a judgment, a deep responsibility is laid upon each of us. Let each man take heed how and what he believes. Keep in mind that it is by false doctrines that Satan has corrupted the Church—by Judaism, by the worship of saints, and by all sorts of errors. We have not time to enumerate them all; but it is by the introduction of these false and heretical doctrines that Satan has succeeded in corrupting Christianity so much so, that, if you wished to look for really the darkest characters of evil, you would have to go among Christians to find it—of course Christians merely in name I mean, but yet those who boast that theirs is the only true Christianity in the world.

I only add now this thought: How important it is if we are approaching these scenes of judgment, that we should understand correctly what is the destiny of the Church, instead of imagining that all is to go on rightly until the whole world is filled with blessedness! How important is it that we should understand that this mystery of iniquity, already at work in the Apostle's days, is to go on until God leaves the bridle loose, as it were, for the whole power of evil to do its worst; that the evil is working until the saints are taken up to meet the Lord in the air, and then the power of Satan will begin to work! This surely is a solemn thought for me, if I care for the Church, how I have discharged my own responsibility, when the question is put, as in Jeremiah, “Where is the flock that was given thee, thy beautiful flock? what wilt thou say when he shall punish thee?” Read the Acts, and see what Christendom is now, and say what likeness there is. Ask not only, is there the doctrine, but where is the practice now? Yet the Lord is faithful. And, when judgment comes, the Lord, having bought the field, has got the treasure safe, and He has kept it safe all the while.

We shall afterward take up that part of our subject Which connects God's dealings with the world more particularly with the Jews. But, meanwhile; the Lord give us to lay this to heart—the difference between what is called the Church, the outward thing, and what the Church really ought to be. And let us see what our own characters are, if there is anything in us which is an adequate fruit of the travail of the Son of God, and of the coming down of the Holy Ghost as the Comforter aril Sanctifier. It is best always, in making application of these truths, to begin with ourselves. Let us see, then; Whether in our hearts we love and care for Christ, and about the condition in which the Church of God is, or whether we are deceiving Ourselves by imagining that it is in a proper condition to set the world right. I do not doubt that the Holy Ghost is remarkably working now. From the first time these things broke in upon my mind, I have always expected that the Spirit of God would work; and I bless God that He is doing so much at this time. Yet I feel assured, from what I find in the Scriptures, that it is by judgment that this working is to be followed.

Melchizedek

The Melchizedek priesthood, in its order being eternal, and in its actings millennial, is full of precious truth about Christ, from beginning to end.

When that wondrous stranger met Abram, he met him as in the kingdom. He met him with the fruit of the vine which, as we know, is to be drunk in the kingdom (Luke 22:18). He refreshed Abram with a feast after the warfare was accomplished, and gave him a blessing from the possessor of heaven and earth. His acts, therefore, were those of one who was standing in the kingdom, or in the days of millennial glory.

But this was a feast upon a sacrifice. It was brought forth by a priest; and such a priest as had already secured or dispensed righteousness and peace, as his name and royalty signified: and this he was, and this he had done (I speak of him only as a type of the true priest, while still hidden in his temple, ere he met Abram). He had then dispensed such provisions as a needy sinner wanted; he was now dispensing what a weary conqueror after the toil of battle wanted. It had been already “righteousness and peace,” and now it was bread and wine,” and “blessing from the possessor of heaven and earth.”

Gen. 14 lets us know this, but does not carry us farther back than this. It shows us the feast of the kingdom after the warfare, and it intimates that such a feast had been preceded by the exercise of an efficacious priesthood. Heb. 7 resumes the mystery, affirming this suggestion of a previous efficacious priesthood, and then instructing us in the character of the sacrifice which that priesthood used, and in which all its efficacy rested.

But this is addition of a truly profound and wondrous kind.

Melchizedek, in Gen. 14, appears at once and abruptly, without any record of himself, in his parentage or ordination. The Spirit, in Heb. 7 uses this as an intimation of the person of the true Melchizedek. But it is a very faint one—justly so in so early a time as the days of Abraham. But still this is enough to make Melchizedek an image of the Son of God, in whom is “the power of an endless life.”

Thus there is intimation of the person of this priestly king in Gen. 14 But there was no intimation there, that it would be Himself whom the royal priest, the true Melchizedek, would offer up. There was no hint, whatever, of this; and yet, it is on this that the efficaciousness of the priesthood altogether depends—a truth which the epistle to the Hebrews largely and distinctly teaches.

So that however refreshing the feast was to the weary warrior, and however blessed the dispensation of righteousness and peace is to a weary sinner, all this rests on the value of that sacrifice which the disposer of peace and of royal refreshings had to offer and did offer, and of which Gen. 14 gives us no hint, but which the epistle fully and powerfully discloses.

“Himself” was the sacrifice, as this epistle again and again tells us. (See 1:3; 7: 27; 9:14, 26.) And this was the sacrifice that entitled the priest to dispense righteousness and peace, and then to spread a feast for the heir of the promise, when the kingdom had come, and the warfare was accomplished. For this “Himself” was “the Son,” the one who had “the power of an endless life.” Death, thereafter, found itself abolished, the moment it touched Him. The captive was the spoiler. The gates of hell could not prevail. He that had the power of death was destroyed. Sin was put away when such an one met its demand. He, “without spot,” offered Himself to God, “through the eternal Spirit.” How could it be, but that sin must be satisfied? The wages of sin was paid; that which was the sting of death was exhausted. The resurrection was the witness of all this.

The altar is thus revealed in this epistle, and only here. Gen. 14 had given us no sight of it And this is the profoundest of the mysteries; and we might well expect to wait for New Testament days to have it thus set forth.

The throne, the sanctuary, the altar—these we get in the combined visions, so to speak, of Gen. 14 and Heb. 7. The feast of the kingdom depends on the efficacious services of the sanctuary or priesthood, and they depend on the value of the altar or sacrifice.

It is this last point that is indeed the great sustaining truth. If the altar be not sufficient, all is gone: the sanctuary will confer no righteousness or peace, the kingdom no refreshing feast of bread and wine. But the altar is gloriously displayed in this epistle. Life is contemplated here, as being in Jesus, but it is life on the other side of death, and therefore the sacrifice or the death is proved to have been equal to its business of putting away sin, which is the sting or occasion of death. Jesus is displayed as One who, having gone down under the penalty, could rise up from thence in victory.

The Millenarian Question: Part 1

[The following letter was addressed to the esteemed author of a volume, entitled “The Flight of the Apostate.” A Poem in three Parts. By the Rev. H. NEWTON, B.A. Wertheim and Mackintosh, London. Its merits as a poem it would be out of the writer's province to discuss. It was on account of a long and ably-written note it contains on the millenarian question, that the volume was shown to him by its author. The following letter was written in reply, and as it discusses questions of general interest, it is presented without alteration to the reader.]

My Dear Sir, I have read with interest and attention, not only the notes you had marked for my perusal, but the entire volume of which they form a part. The notes contain as condensed a view as I have ever met with of the argument against pre-millennialism. Should you find time to read “Plain Papers on Prophetic Subjects,” I think you will see that I have there replied to almost each point touched upon in your notes; but as my replies are scattered through the volume, I will endeavor as briefly as I can to state why your arguments fail to convince me of the justice of the conclusion at which you have arrived.

In the first place, I demur entirely to the statement (page 101), that “the seat of the theory of the personal millennial reign of our Lord upon earth is acknowledged to be in Rev. 20:1-10.” That this passage treats of the subject, all who hold the doctrine of the personal reign will, of course, admit; that it supplies the instruction as to the period of that reign, from which the distinctive word “millennial” is drawn, is undoubtedly true; but to say that “the seat of the theory” “is acknowledged to be in Rev. 20,” is not correct. It represents us as acknowledging what we not only deny, but are prepared to disprove; viz., that it is from this passage exclusively or pre-eminently, that the knowledge and proof of the doctrine is to be drawn. For myself I can truly say, that except as to the single point of duration, it was not from this Scripture more than others, or so much as others, that my own belief of millenarianism was derived; and as to the point of duration, my views underwent no change when the pre-millennial doctrine was received. I believed in a thousand years of blessedness on earth before I saw that it was to be introduced by the personal coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The attempt to make the whole question turn on the interpretation of Rev. 20, is, in my opinion, much more common than just. Had it pleased God to withhold that chapter, or even the entire book of Revelation, the proof would still, it seems to me, have been complete and decisive, of a long period of universal righteousness and joy introduced by Christ's second coming, and characterized by his reigning along with his risen and glorified saints over Israel and the nations of the earth. You will not suppose, from this statement, that I undervalue the confirmation, afforded by the Apocalypse, of doctrines previously revealed, or the precise instruction of ch. 20 as to the 1000 years' continuance of Christ's reign. That against which I protest is the representation that this passage is the seat instead of a seat of the doctrine in debate.

It was with sincere pleasure that. I found, on pages 40-54, the distinct recognition on your part of an approaching crisis, “when God will take the cup of trembling out of the hand of the Jew, and put it into the hand of the Gentiles that afflicted him.” You say, “Whether we turn to the old or to the New Testament, we read of a time (immediately preceding the triumph of the gospel) of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time,” “We have repeated intimations in Scripture,” you say, “of a grand crisis, a final and decisive controversy, a day of retributive judgment upon nations, which have put the last insult upon his truth.” You quote the passages, “I have trodden the wine-press alone,” &c.; “For the day of vengeance is in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come.” “It consists,” you observe, “of judgments, unlike preceding ones, by which 'the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.'“ You speak of it as “connected in many places with the fall of Babylon, almost everywhere characterized by surprising rapidity, and accompanied by a prophecy of the restoration of Israel; so much so, that these events have been always apprehended to be synchronous.” You add a serious of quotations from Isa. 13; 14:24-27., 34; Jer. 23; 25:1, 51; Ezek. 36; 39 Joel 3; Mic. 4; 5; Zeph. 3:8, 9; Hag. 2; and Zech. 1:15-21; 12:2, and 14.

It was not from Rev. 20 that I received pre-millennial views, however confirmatory of those views that chapter may since have proved. It was from the many passages which treat of that solemn crisis, your expectation of which is so forcibly expressed in the above quotations. I found links of connection between these and many New Testament passages, which left no doubt on my mind that not only do Israel's restoration, judgment on the Gentiles, and the universal triumph of truth and righteousness, synchronize with each other, but that the synchronism includes another event, the most central and majestic of all—the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ himself. In proof of this, allow me to call your attention to one or two of the passages you quote, along with the connected passages in the later volume of inspiration.

One passage to which you refer is that in Daniel's prophecy, in which he predicts a “time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation, even to that same time.” Happily, I have no need to prove to you that this does not refer to the time of Israel's overthrow and Jerusalem's destruction by Titus, but to the yet future though rapidly approaching time of Israel's deliverance and restoration. This you believe and maintain. In quoting Daniel's words you insert an explanatory clause, which shows decisively that you regard as future the time of unequaled trouble which he foretells. “A time (immediately preceding the triumph of the gospel) of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation, even to that same time,” is the form in which you quote the passage. Turn then, my dear sir, to Matt. 23; 24, and what do you find? At the close of the former, our Lord, crossing for the last time the threshold of the temple, says to the blinded and infuriated nation, “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” Then follows the conversation between him and his disciples in which, he having foretold the destruction of the temple and its buildings, and they having asked him, “When shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the age” (αἰῶνος)? he delivers to them the majestic prophecy, in which he certainly answers the two latter questions, whether the first be answered by him or not. It is in this discourse he quotes Daniel's words, adding to them what still further distinguishes the epoch in question from all others: “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not from the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.” Such is to be the extremity of distress, that those days are, for the elect's sake, to be shortened: else “there should no flesh be saved.” But while Daniel connects this tremendous crisis with the deliverance of his people, our Lord connects it also with a more solemn event. “For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together. IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE TRIBULATION OF THOSE DAYS shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” I am not ignorant of the efforts made to show that this is not a real personal coming of Christ, but only a figure of his interposition in providence at the destruction of Jerusalem 1800 years ago. With you I need make no reply to this interpretation; as you quote the prediction of the time of unequaled trouble as one yet to be fulfilled. And if it be not a personal coming which our Lord's words denote, I know of no language by which such an event could be described. And when we bear in mind the declaration which gave rise to the whole discourse, “Ye shall not see me henceforth till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord,” I see not how the conclusion can be resisted that, in ch. 24:27-31, our Lord predicts the circumstances under which repentant Israel will see him again—see him as truly and personally as when their impenitent forefathers saw him cross the threshold of that house which was “desolate” indeed when his presence was withdrawn.

Isa. 24-27 is another Scripture from which you quote in reference to the solemn crisis which you regard (justly, I believe) as at hand. It is indeed an impressive testimony to those judgments, “by which,” as you observe, “the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.” But it is in the midst of this prophecy, connected both with the judgments to be executed and the blessedness to ensue, that we find the words quoted by the apostle in 1 Cor. 15:54, quoted there by him with the most precise declaration of the epoch at which, and the event in which, they are to find their fulfillment. “So WHEN this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, THEN shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.” To speak of Rev. 20 as being the only or the principal passage which treats of a pre-millennial resurrection at Christ's coming, is surely to overlook his divinely-inspired comment of the apostle on the saying recorded by Isaiah. Seeing that the Holy Ghost has deigned to tell us in the New Testament when a certain prediction of the Old shall be accomplished, is it not boldness approaching to temerity to insist on interposing a thousand years between the event foretold and the moment indicated for its accomplishment?

Isa. 59:18, 19, is a remarkable prediction of the crisis you anticipate. “According to their deeds, accordingly he will repay, fury to his adversaries, recompense to his enemies; to the islands he will repay recompense. So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him.” Here we have the judgments, the outpouring of the Spirit, and the universal prevalence of piety which is to follow. But are these the whole of the events predicted in the passage? No; the next words are, “And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the Lord.” These are the words quoted by the apostle in Rom. 11, where, predicting Israel's future conversion, he says, “And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob.” Should the variation between the passage in Isaiah and the quotation in Romans be insisted upon, it seems to me that either way the doctrine of the pre-millennial coming of Christ is established. If the Old Testament version be received, that coming is foretold; if that in the New Testament be preferred, it declares the presence of the Deliverer at the epoch in question, and thus presupposes his coming.

(To be continued.)

The Millenarian Question: Part 2

Both from Isaiah and from Joel you quote the passages which treat of the harvest and the vintage. I need not insert these quotations here. But who can fail to note their connection with “the harvest” in Matt. 13, which our Lord declares to be “the end of the age” —the harvest and vintage in Rev. 14, where “he that sat on the cloud (like unto the Son of man) thrust in his sickle on the earth; and the earth was reaped;” while “the winepress trodden without the city” is said, in Rev. 14:15, to be trodden by the One who comes forth from heaven, followed by “the armies which were in heaven,” to his victory over the beast, the false prophet, and their armies. On this coming and victory there follows, as foretold in the much-controverted chapter 20, the reign of the saints with Christ. To your remarks on this, I now turn.

Your first observation is, that in the Apocalypse “life and death, and rising from the dead, stand for the enjoyment, the loss, and the recovery of corporate or political existence and power.” It is thus you interpret ch. 11 and other portions of the book; and you infer that these words are to be so understood in ch. 20. But with whatever weight this argument may apply to numerous pre-millenarian expositors of the Revelation, you are not unaware that there are those who look for the fulfillment of ch. 11. in the sackcloth testimony, martyr-death, and triumphant resurrection of two individual men, yet to appear on God's behalf in the crisis which is probably at hand. And should it even be conceded that the terms life, death, and resurrection, are in some parts of the Apocalypse used figuratively, it would not follow that they are to be so understood throughout the book. Much less can it be justly inferred from such premises that these terms are to be understood figuratively in passages of ch. 20, which certainly seem to be literal explanations of the symbolic scenes which the Prophet of Patmos beheld. “This is the first resurrection,” and, “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection; on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years,” for no part of John's description of the vision which he beheld, but would appear to be a literal statement of what that division was designed to represent. So that if life, and death, and living again, were to be understood figuratively in John's statement of what he saw, it would by no means follow that they are to be understood thus in his explanatory statements; and it is in these that the proof of the doctrine of a pre-millennial resurrection of the saints is found.

You say “There is a very obvious reason for the distinctive epithet first, in the first resurrection which the world is to witness.” It is, that “as the resurrection of an individual saint at the last day is, as it were, seminally contained in his spiritual life, in his being quickened in time; so it is with regard to the entire mass.” “They have their part,” you observe, “in the mystical body of Christ, which, when triumphant in every part of the world, has that triumph denominated by a resurrection, not of this or of that people, but generally by a first resurrection.”

But if this be so, how can “the rest of the dead” consist, as you represent, of “the rest of the wicked, slain as a party, having no corporate, acknowledged existence” till Satan is loosed, when “they do live” again, in Gog and Magog's rebellion? Let the prophecy be understood as treating of a literal, bodily resurrection, and the language is intelligible and appropriate. Righteous and wicked are both alike dead in the sense of bodily dissolution; and it might, therefore, with the utmost propriety be said, after naming the resurrection of the saints, “the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished.” Both form one aggregate of dead ones, of which part after the abstraction of another part, can properly be termed “the rest of the dead.” But if the risen and reigning martyrs do but represent the triumph and ascendancy of the church during the 1000 years, and the resurrection of “the dead” the revival of wickedness at the close of that period, with what propriety, either as to language or facts, could this phrase, “the rest of the dead,” be so used? As to language, I say: for surely the pre-millennial non-existence of the righteous as a party, and the millennial non-existence of the wicked as such, cannot make the two at any time appear, as one aggregate of dead ones, of which it could be said, that part of the dead rise, and “the rest of the dead” rise not again for 1000 years. The very idea carries absurdity on the face of it. Then the phrase is just as inappropriate as to facts. Do you really mean that prior to the millennium, truth and righteousness are to be so extinguished from amongst men, that the saints, “as a party,” have no “corporate acknowledged existence?” If not, from what state of death do they emerge, rendering it in any sense proper to term the millennially non-existent wicked party “the rest of the dead"? No; the attempt to set aside the literal import of the words, “first resurrection” and “rest of the dead,” involves all who make it in difficulties and confusion, with which the alleged difficulties of premillennialism bear no comparison whatever.

The Millenarian Question: Part 3

It seems to me that you greatly overrate the magnitude of the post-millennial rebellion, when you say “an extent of territory and a number of subjects is here ascribed to Satan such as the beast and the false prophet never had.” The words of scripture are, that Satan “shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up on the breath of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.” No doubt it is a solemn defection from Christ which is thus depicted—an awful proof that unregenerate man, with every possible advantage, is powerless to withstand the enemy when he is let loose. But his going forth “to gather,” would not necessarily imply that he succeeds in gathering all; and the expression “as the sand of the sea” is, as we all know, applied in the Old Testament to Israel, and does not, therefore, necessarily denote such an unprecedently overwhelming multitude as you represent. But be this as it may, what ground there can be for speaking of “millions upon millions of close hypocrites, mixed up with the company of the truly converted” during the millennium, I am at a lose to conceive. Forty or fifty years would be “a little season” compared with a “thousand;” and supposing that none were deceived by Satan, but those who were born after he was loosed, and who grew up without being converted, it is easy to realize how this part of the prophecy might be fulfilled. And if Satan could triumph over our first parents, when as yet their nature was untainted, what difficulty is there as to his permitted success with those who, confessedly, have the same need of regeneration as ourselves?

The objections as to the camp of the saints and the beloved city being besieged—as though the inmates of that camp and city were the glorified saints have been so often answered, that I will not repeat here what has thus been urged. It is easier to call such answers “castle-building,” &c., than to present the slightest proof of our maintaining, or being under any necessity to maintain, that the occupants of the beloved city are any other than Israel after the flesh, dwelling in their own city Jerusalem. What more of inconsistency can there be in the idea of an attack by mortal foes on such a city and its mortal inhabitants, even though its name be “Jehovah Shammah,” than in the thought of any similar attack in days gone by? Then, besides, the assault is an unsuccessful one; the enemies are permitted to come up; but it is to their own sudden and overwhelming and eternal overthrow.

You say, “the evangelist saw thrones, the symbols of honor and power; not one of them is specified as the throne of Christ. He is not here placed in front, nor as the principal figure, but named as an adjunct at the doze of the verse, they lived and reigned with Christ. “I saw thrones and they sat on them; they sat on them. Could it be the mind of the Spirit to point out, in such a form, the great coming of the Judge of all the earth, literally to fix His throne, with those of glorified saints, amongst or above all the potentates of the earth?” “What would we think,” you inquire, “of the coming, the installment, &c., of an earthly prince, related after the following fashion I saw chariots, and persons seated in them, and great honor was paid to them; they entered the city and the palace; they took their seats and were installed in their high and honorable offices with the prince?”

I have quoted thus largely that I may not be supposed to do injustice to your argument, which has, at first sight, some appearance of strength. This appearance vanishes, however, on a moment's reflection. No one maintains that “the coming of the Judge of the earth” is pointed out in this vision of the millennial thrones and their occupants. All who regard this vision as depicting the personal reign of Christ and His saints, see the prediction of his coming in the latter part of chap. 19; and no one can allege that in the vision there portrayed, the central, conspicuous, and all-commanding place is not occupied by our Lord Himself. I am not at this moment discussing the import of the vision, or whether it be a personal coming of Christ that it sets forth. This you would, of course, dispute. But, in examining the views you controvert, fairness requires that you consider them as a whole. If those on whose tenets you remark see the coming of Christ in chap. 19, and His reign with His saints in chap. 20 it will never do to ignore their use of the former chapter, and assume that, in their view, the latter presents a theme which they believe the former alone to handle.

And if, as all millenarians insist, the coming is treated of in chap. 19, and the reign in chap. 20, what is there surprising in the fact that, the descent from heaven of the Lord Jesus Christ in pomp and majesty having been foretold, the saints being mentioned as mere attendants of His train, they should, in the description that follows, be mentioned first, as partaking of the glories of His reign? It is only by the arbitrary and unwarranted severance of the chapters, that this argument has show of plausibility or strength.

But you urge that the same remark applies, and with still greater force, to Dan. 7. In it, you say, we have both prophecy and interpretation. The prophet sees in vision “the Ancient of days” —God the Father. He beholds “one like unto the Son of man,” and he “came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him.” To him, thus brought into the presence of the Ancient of days, all nations are rendered subject. “In the interpretation” of this vision, you say, “we have not so much as a hint of a personal coming of the Son of God to destroy Antichrist: but on the contrary, what forms a powerful argument against it.” “In the symbolic part of the chapter everything is consigned over to him. In the interpretative part, what we have as the effect of transactions taking place in the invisible world is simply this, the kingdoms shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whom all dominions shall serve and obey.”

In reply to this well put argument, I would, first of all, freely admit, that no coming of Christ to the earth is expressly treated of in Dan. 7 That is, no one could gather from that chapter alone, that the final and universal kingdom would be introduced by the coming of the Son of man to the earth. I lay stress on these words to the earth, for there is a coming treated of, but it is, as you urge, “to the Ancient of days.” But though the chapter itself does not expressly teach the coming of Christ to this earth, there is an expression used as to His coming to the Ancient of days, which, when viewed in connection with numerous quotations of it, and allusions to it, in other parts of scripture, makes it sufficiently evident, that a coming of Christ to the earth is to take place at the crisis of which this chapter treats. “I saw in the night visions, and behold one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.” Let it be remembered, then, that, when Daniel wrote, Jesus of Nazareth had not come in humiliation, nor was it as yet revealed that he was the “one like unto the Son of man.” But there can be no doubt that this title “Son of man” was appropriated by our adorable Lord, and in His lips the phrase “came with the clouds of heaven” received a significance and application, which could scarcely have been inferred from the mere language of the prophecy itself. “And then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.” (Matt. 24:30.) They shall see! True, that in Dan. 7, the coming of the Son of man to the Ancient of days might seem to be “a transaction taking place in the invisible world.” But in our Lord's quotation of its phraseology, we find that there are to be human spectators, either of this transaction, or of its immediate result. The tribes of the earth are to see the coming of the Son of man in the clouds of heaven. Equally emphatic is our Lord's allusion to this prophecy when before Caiaphas. Adjured by the living God to say whether he was the Christ, the Son of God, the meek and holy Sufferer replies, “Thou hast said; nevertheless I say unto you, hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.” (Matt. 26:64.)

Do we object, then, to listen to the angelic interpretation to Daniel, of the vision he had beheld? By no means. We only object to the understanding it in such a sense as to set aside the interpretation of it by a greater than the angel—by the Son of man Himself.

Should it still be asked why there is no mention of the Son of man by the angel, but only repeated mention of “the saints of the Most High,” let the following suggestion be weighed. In Daniel's day the question of all-absorbing interest, was not so much as to the Person by whose coming the kingdom and dominion should be wrested from the hands of its Gentile possessors; but as to its transfer by the Most High from these haughty oppressors of His people, to the very saints whom they persecuted and trod under foot. Daniel was a captive; the holy people were in bondage to the Gentiles: the holy city was in their hands, to waste and to destroy; and the vision and interpretation of Dan. 7 were evidently designed to put in relief the assurance, ominous indeed to the Gentiles, but most consolatory to Jewish saints, that the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth, would, in His own time, execute judgment on the imperial power of the Gentiles, and transfer to His own down-trodden people the scepter of the whole earth.

Even this could not be made known without a revelation of the glorious One in and through whom these counsels of God are to be accomplished; and accordingly, in the vision, “in the symbolic part of the chapter,” as you say, “everything is consigned over to Him.” When the blessed Heir of these dignities was here and rejected by the people—His own earthly people, who are to hold under Him the dominion under the whole heaven—the question of His person and of His coming became the all important one; and He leaves no room for doubt, that His coming in the clouds of heaven will be visible to all; that public as was the humiliation He underwent, the insults heaped upon Him by mankind, so public shall be the display of His glory, the vindication of His outraged dignities and claims. “Behold he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him.” (Rev. 1:7.)

In the remarks on John 5:28, 29, Dan. 12:2, and on the subject of a premillennial resurrection of the saints as a whole, there is nothing but what has been urged and answered by almost all who have discussed the subject. If the “hour” in which the Son of God quickens dead souls has already lasted 1800 years, why should not the “hour” in which “all that are in the graves shall come forth” be of more than 1000 years duration? And why speak of a “resurrection of life” and a “resurrection of judgment,” if there be but one simultaneous resurrection of those who, after being raised, are divided into classes, as a shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats? Why speak of the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matt. 20 v. as fulfilled in the resurrection and judgment of all mankind, when there is no mention of resurrection in the passage, and when the term employed is never used in scripture except of living nations?

It is not a gratuitous assumption, a mere begging of the question, that in Matt. 13 συντέλεια τοῦ αἰῶυός means “the end of the age,” or “present premillennial dispensation.” It is, on the contrary, a meaning of the words demonstrated to be correct, by the accustomed force of the words themselves, and by the entire scope of the divine instruction which the chapter contains. The subject of the chapter is “the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven” —mysteries, which have their existence and development contemporaneously with Israel's rejection of Christ, and the judicial blindness under which, in consequence, that nation lies. To suppose that these “mysteries” extend beyond the era of Israel's dispersion, and the universal triumph of truth and righteousness with which all scripture associates Israel's restoration, would be to confound things which most widely and obviously differ: and nothing can be plainer than that the transition from “mystery” to “manifestation” —from the period of patience to that of the establishment of righteousness by power—is, in this chapter, identical with the harvest, the end of the age. The millennial saints, whom you would have included in “the net,” or amongst “the wheat and tares,” evidently belong to “the age to come” —the period of manifestation and of power.

You assert that “there is no dispensation but one, that of the gospel, so long as sin and Satan exist—so long as there may be found in the world deceivable mortals exposed to signal divine visitation—so long as death, the last enemy, as well as he who had the power of death, are undestroyed.” If all you mean by this is, that all saved sinners, from Adam or Abel down to the last that shall be converted, are saved by grace, through faith, saved on the ground of Christ's atoning work, and regenerated by the Holy Ghost, most gladly do I concur in all this. But this is no warrant for denying the existence of separate dispensations. When the apostle says, “until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed where there is no law,” does he describe the same dispensation as in another passage where he says “the words spoken by angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward?” Is there no change of dispensation indicated by our Lord's words, “Ye have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, that ye resist not evil,” &c.? Was the “heir differing nothing from a servant, though lord of all,” under the same dispensation as he to whom the apostle says, “Wherefore thou art no more a servant but a son: and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ!” (Gal. 4) Can it be all one and the same dispensation in which Jews and Gentiles were separated by a “middle wall of partition,” and in which, that wall having been broken down, and peace having been made by the blood of the cross, Jew and Gentile are both one in Christ? It is to differences like these, that the phrase “difference of dispensations” is applied. Call them by what names you please, who can deny their existence, or the stress laid upon them in God's word? And while the proof of this point would require more time and space than would befit my present communication, proof is not wanting of a future change of dispensation. When suffering is exchanged for triumph, Satan bound, and Christ and His saints filling the place for good which he and his angels have done for evil and misrule, surely a change of dispensation of no small magnitude will have taken place.

Christ sits, you say, “at the right hand of God till his enemies are made his footstool. He therefore sits there all through the millennium.” Not so: God's making Christ's enemies His footstool is evidently distinct from Christ's subjugation of His foes by His own power. The effect of Christ's enemies being put as a footstool under His feet is, that Zion becomes the earthly center of His power in judgment, the rod of His strength being sent out of Zion, while He rules in the midst of His enemies. Once He was crucified through weakness (2 Cor. 13:4). Now, He waits in patience, “expecting till his enemies be made his footstool.” (Heb. 10:13.) Ere long, His people shall be willing in the day of His power. (Psa. 110:3.) And He who is now at Jehovah's right hand “shall strike through kings in the day of His wrath.” (ver. 5.) “The heavens must receive him until the time of restitution of all things.” On this you remark, “from what we have seen of the nature of the millennium, there is then no restitution of all things, though great progress is made towards it. This restitution, if any where, is described in 1 Cor. 15:24— “Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God,” &c. Had Peter said “whom the heaven must receive till all things have been restored,” there might have been some force in this argument; but his language was “until the times of restitution of all things;” and surely these are millennial times. How all things can be restored when the heavens and the earth flee away, and no place is found for them, it would be difficult to explain.

Having replied at large to Dr. Brown's remarks on Acts 2 and 3 (see Plain Papers, pages 448-454), I must refer you to what is there advanced as my answer to what you give on those chapters, acknowledging your obligations to Dr. B.

No one supposes that the destruction of death is premillennial; but the swallowing up death in victory is decided to be so by Isa. 25 as we have already seen. The fact is, that the whole millennial period, and the little season which succeeds, are characterized by Christ's actively subduing, by His own power, the enemies who are put as a footstool under His feet at the moment He arises from Jehovah's throne. The last of these is death, which is not destroyed till after the judgment of the great white throne.

Nor have I the least idea that the conflagration of 2 Peter 3 is pre-millennial. That “the day of the Lord,” “the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men,” includes the whole millennial period is sufficiently evident, I think, from many passages. And it is a day in the which the universal conflagration will surely take place. But Peter says nothing to decide in what part of the day, whether in its early dawn or at its close, this solemn event occurs. A comparison of his statements with Rev. 20, 21 seems to me to make it plain that it is at the very close of the day. The new heavens and the new earth of Rev. 21:1 seem to follow at once on the events foretold at the close of the previous chapter: and between these events and some of which Peter treats there is surely a close resemblance, if not absolute identity. But it is the day as a whole, with the succeeding post-millennial state, for which Peter says we wait.

No doubt, “the trump of God” (1 Thess. 4), and the “last trump” (1 Cor. 15), denote one and the same signal of the resurrection and translation of the saints at the coming of the Lord. But we have seen that the Holy Ghost authoritatively associates these events with the fulfillment of a prophecy assuredly premillennial: and unless there be mention made of the sound of a trumpet in some passage undeniably treating of post-millennial events, this declaration of the apostle ought surely to over-rule all objections founded on the expression “the last trump.”

“The expression 'the last day' simply conveys to our minds,” you observe, “the idea of the termination of time.” To this I do not know, of any sound objection. But be it remembered that for all of whom Christ says (in John 6 repeating the statement four times) “I will raise him up at the last day,” time has terminated, and it is not to another time-state—to natural life—that they are restored, but everlasting life, as to their bodies, as well as their souls. But to assume that time has therefore terminated with all mankind is certainly to beg the question, which in part at least is this, Whether, during the millennium, there be not two departments of blessedness, heaven and earth, the one bearing all the characteristics of a dispensation in time, the other eternal and without change. Scripture does testify, that it is the purpose and counsel of God in the “dispensation of the fullness of times to gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in him” (Eph. 1). Has not “Christ the first-fruits” entered personally on His eternal and unchanging state? And has He no present connections with the world and time? Why should not the harvest, of which He is “the first-fruits,” similarly enter on a state of perfect, unchanging, eternal blessedness and glory, and yet for a thousand years be ministers of light, healing, liberty, and joy, to those who are still in a mundane state?

Believing in no “millennial Adamics” different from all who bear the image of the first Adam, and need to receive, in regeneration and resurrection, the image of the second, I feel myself under no obligation to defend what may have been advanced on such a subject by others.

I know not how to understand your intimation (page 123,) that the Savior's words “this generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled” referred to the accomplishment of that entire prophecy, Matt. 24 in the destruction of Jerusalem and its attendant events. You seem so definitely to quote Daniel's prophecy of the time of unequaled trouble, repeated by our Lord in this chapter, as yet to be fulfilled in the approaching crisis of nations, that I was unprepared for such an interpretation as that now referred to. You do indeed, on this same page, speak of Christ's coming “upon the Jews, and the analogous one upon the Gentile nations, which is generally expected.” But the Savior's words are much too precise to admit of a double interpretation like this. If “this generation” meant the succession of men then living upon earth, and if our Lord thus affirmed that the men then living should not die till everything He had foretold should be accomplished, any application of His words to yet future events, is clearly out of the question. And yet it does appear to me that he must be a bold man, who would undertake to prove that all included by our Lord in “these things” was fulfilled during the life-time of His contemporaries on earth. But this is a subject too wide to enter upon here.

As to Luke 17 if the heavenly saints who are, at Christ's coming, to be caught up to meet Him, and so he forever with Him, were the only persons recognized as His people; if there were to be no Jewish saints spared throughout the unequaled tribulation; no elect for whose sakes those days are to be shortened; I could understand your argument drawn from the directions not to flee, &c. These are evidently designed for Christ's earthly Jewish disciples, the Jewish remnant in the approaching crisis, not for the Church, which at a previous stage of his descent, will have been caught up to meet Him in the air. “One of the days of the Son of man” will doubtless be the object of intense, longing desire, to that deeply tried remnant; and for a while their desire will be unfulfilled, drawing forth from them the well-known prophetic utterance, “Lord, how long?”

Millenarians do not question the sufficiency of God's word and Spirit for the conversion of any; nor do they suppose that any will be converted otherwise than by the Spirit and word of God. But God's government of the world is something entirely distinct from His gracious operations in converting souls. Souls have been converted through all the changing forms of the divine administration, in regard to the government of the world, and will, doubtless, in greater numbers than ever, be converted during the millennial age. All who will then be converted will owe their regeneration to the Holy Spirit, who will then, as now, act by the word.

But the government of the world will not be then by secret providence as it has been ever since the fall. It will not be a theocracy, administered as in Israel heretofore, by mere fallible human agents; much less will it be the imperial Gentile rule which began with the permitted overthrow of the Lord's throne at Jerusalem. It will be the reign of Christ and His heavenly saints, to whom (Satan being bound and all obstinate rebels having been destroyed) will be committed the administration of the world's government for a thousand years. Happy period! Happier still the portion of those, who, having been partakers of Christ's sufferings, shall then be the sharers of His throne, and companions of His joy.

I fear you have greatly misunderstood millenarians, if you suppose that we overlook the spiritual operation involved in Israel's conversion, or that we deem the agency of the Holy Ghost insufficient to effect it. But if there was nothing inconsistent with these foundation truths in the peculiar circumstances attending the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, why should they be thought to be impugned by those who see in scripture (or think they see) that Israel's conversion will be attended by their literally looking on Him whom they have pierced? Will the spiritual view be less efficacious because of His being revealed to their mortal gaze? That their unbelief, like that of Thomas, should demand such proof, is doubtless to their reproach. “Because thou hast seen me thou hast believed; blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed.” Such is the superior blessedness to which we have been called by sovereign grace. But how touching the grace, which in convincing Thomas and subduing Saul, by means of that which appealed to the senses, as well as to the conscience and the heart, afforded a type of the mercy yet to be extended to Israel after the flesh As to 2 Thess. 2 believing, with many others, that Antichrist is a person, the use of the word παρονσἰα, as to him, is with me no presumption against its being used personally of our Lord, in every instance of its occurrence as to Him, both in that and in the former epistle. And it does seem to me that the means used to evade the proof afforded by this chapter of Christ's personal, pre-millennial coming, are such as would not be tolerated in regard to any other book than scripture.

As I once wrote elsewhere— “Suppose a mere human author to write two treatises, the latter intended to throw further light on the subject of the former; suppose that a certain term or phrase occurs more frequently than any other in these writings, and that this phrase is always used in one fixed determinate sense; suppose that it has been thus used twelve or thirteen times without one exception, and that this is acknowledged by all who read the writings in question. There is however, a fourteenth instance in which the phrase occurs. There is no intimation on the part of the writer that he uses it in a different sense. There is nothing in the immediate context to require that it should be understood in a different sense. So far from this, it is employed in the usual sense at the commencement of the paragraph in which it again occurs in the instance supposed. What should we think of any one who would contend, in a case like this, that the phrase is to be understood in a different sense, the fourteenth time of its occurrence, from that in which it is used in all the former instances?” Now this is what you do with Paul's two epistles to the Thessalonians: and it is the only way in which you can evade the demonstration afforded by chap. 2 second epistle, of the pre-millennial personal coming of Christ.

But you urge that Antichrist is said to be “consumed by the breath of his mouth,” as well as destroyed by the brightness of His coming! But ἀναλίσκω strictly means “to take away” — “to destroy.” Liddell and Scott, though giving the sense “to use up, lavish, squander” when applied to money or substance, say “(2) of PERSONS, to kill, to destroy.” It is the word used in Luke 9:54, where the disciples inquire, if they may ask fire from heaven to consume the Samaritan villagers. Its use in 2 Thess. 2 cannot therefore be allowed as an argument for the gradual weakening of antichrist by the truth, or gospel, prior to his complete destruction by the brightness of Christ's coming. Further, “the breath, or spirit of his mouth” does not, as far as I can gather from scripture, mean “the gospel” or the “saving influences of the Spirit.” Job 4:9; 15:30; Isa. 30:28; also 33: all use the phrase of judgment on the wicked persons, not of converting influences on men's souls.

As to your closing argument from Rev. 19 that the nature of the case forbids the thought of mortal men turning their puny weapons against the Lord, personally revealed from heaven, I answer: First, that it is impossible to say to what amount of hardihood human wickedness, inspired to madness by Satan's utmost power, may extend. Think of Pharaoh and the Egyptians. If after the ten plagues, and the miracle of one person dead in every house of the Egyptians, while not one of the blood-sheltered Israelites fell: if after all this, and the equally miraculous opening of the Red Sea to let the redeemed hosts pass through, they could and did, and that too, in the face of time pillar of cloud and fire, pursue Israel into the bed of the Red Sea, there to meet a watery grave, it is hard to say what human wickedness may not attempt. But, secondly, it is a purely gratuitous assumption, that the heavenly and earthly armies are arrayed in each other's sight, like two mere human hosts; or that the beast, false prophet, and their armies see anything of Christ and His heavenly followers, till the moment they are smitten with destruction by the overwhelming apparition. They are “gathered together to make war against his army;” but surely this language does not imply that they do or that they can carry out their intent after He and His army appear. Was not Saul of Tarsus fighting against Christ—kicking against the pricks—albeit he had not seen Him, and could not bear to behold Him when He appeared? It was in mercy that Christ appeared to him, though even thus he was smitten to the ground, and blinded for three days. It will be in judgment that He appears to the anti-Christian confederacy, the heads of which will be cast alive into the lake of fire, while their followers are slain, not converted, by the sword of Him that sat upon the horse.

From the Old Testament I have no doubt that it is against Christ, in His connection with Israel and the holy land, that the anti-Christian forces will be gathered.

It will assuredly he in ignorance of what awaits them, that for their own purposes of ambition and hatred to God, they will have Assembled there. “Now also many nations are gathered against thee, that say, Let her be defiled, and let our eye look upon Zion. But they know not the thoughts of the Lord, neither understand they his counsel; FOR HE SHALL GATHER THEM AS THE SHEAVES INTO HIS FLOOR” (Mic. 4:11, 12). True, that in the prophet, the daughter of Zion is exhorted to “arise and thresh,” and Israel will, doubtless, be used as executioners of the divine vengeance; but the Apocalypse shows, as well as certain Old Testament passages, as Zech. 14, Isa. 66, &c., that the overthrow of the ungodly confederacy will, first of all, be by the sudden, unlooked for, descent of Christ and His heavenly hosts.

Excuse, my dear Sir, this hasty sketch, and believe me, with sincere Christian regards.

The Mind of Christ: 1 Cor. 2

The mind of Christ is what belongs to the saint as a new man. The Spirit of God first quickened, and now he has the mind of Christ, to mind the things above, as quickened out of the system of this world. He has the intelligence of Christ, through the Holy Ghost and the word. It is the communicated mind of God as it has formed itself in His purposes of Christ.

When taught of God, we shall find proportion in truth; it will find its place. Where this is not the case, persons will overstate or wrongly apply truth, and find it will not tell. Then, in place of judging themselves, they will judge the truth, and make no progress.

Error in judgment is connected with wrongness of affection. When the man in the parable said, “I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them; I pray thee have me excused,” it was as much as to say, I prefer oxen to the supper. If a person says, I cannot see, then his eye is not single; he cannot justify himself before God. “If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.” Whenever we walk in conscience before God, we shall find our path simple: having the mind of Christ, things are as clear as day.

We have in Acts 13 an instance of the ability of applying scripture, with the mind of Christ, to the circumstances in which they were. “Paul and Barnabas waxed bold and said, it was necessary,” &c. In this scripture we do not find positive particular command to Paul or Barnabas; but as having the mind of Christ, they could find command there and say, “for so hath the Lord commanded us"... The apostle found his place with Jesus. (See Isa. 49:6)

A Few Words on Modern Criticism

In almost all the critical works of our times, we find a deep-seated deadness of the mind to the real essential character of the divine word; a blindness which is incapable of seeing the spiritual and heavenly character of scripture. It is only by remembering this sad fact, that one can comprehend how it was possible for criticism to subject the text to such cruel tortures: only thus one can account for the cool indifference with which such indignities to God's word are regarded, even where they are not received. And this spiritual disorder arises simply from the fact, that the fundamental relations of the heart to God and divine things are not right; that there is wanting fear and reverence before His majesty, not to speak of confidence in His love; that light and darkness are not really distinguished, and carefully kept separate (Isa. 66:2). From olden times it has been thought a heinous crime to remove landmarks; but it is the boast of our day to blot out the holiest of all boundary-lines, that between truth and error. Man—Satan—invents something intermediate, and is applauded for boldness and originality of thought. Our fathers knew well what they said when they maintained that the testimony of the Holy Spirit was the worst canon of Bible criticism. He who emancipates himself from this subjection of the conscience to the word of God, is an unbiblical critic. Let us not sever, on any point, knowledge and the conscience; let us give way to no sophisms, however specious, but adhere in theological questions of all kinds to moral bearings and connections. This is, above all, an imperative obligation in the case of those sacred writers to whom we are indebted for all the revealed light we possess, and of whom we find throughout, that their sense of God's authority and truth was strong and delicate in a most eminent degree (1 Tim. 2:7; John 19:35; 2 Pet. 1:16). It is by no means narrow-minded to proceed from such a starting point; it is inward liberty from the thralldom of human willfulness; it is natural, sound, unsophisticated sense, which alone leads us to a right, holy, and thorough understanding of the truth. Men have lost faith in the supernatural, not because they have gained, but chiefly because they have lost knowledge of nature, no less than of what is above nature.

Modern theology deeply needs to be reminded of that word, “God made man upright, but he sought out many inventions.” I know from my own experience, in which I was not spared the passing through the furnace of criticism, that it is the simple foundation truths, to which our conscience bears witness, that form the decisive and all-pervading element, and that they are able to refute the dazzling deductions of a science which refuses to place itself in the light of God's all-righteous countenance. In a time like ours, when the gospel, not only in its links with the mysteries of Christ, but even in its most simple and essential elements, is foolishness to the Greeks, yea, to the noblest among them, it is of paramount importance to be faithful in these first principles, which, however insignificant they may appear, are the foundation of all the rest.

IGNOTUS.

Modern Hegelianism Compared With Brahminism

“Upwards of thirty years ago a professor in one of the German universities taught a new philosophical system, which was greatly admired, and considered to exhibit most astonishing progress in the development of the human mind—and what is it? Nothing more or less than the most common Brahminism, as it has existed here in India for upwards of 2000 years. I shall briefly mention the three chief points of this system.

“Hegel and his disciples, of which Strauss is one, say: God Almighty, the Creator, must reveal Himself, go out of life—being the subject, become His object. They say, this world is the personification of God, His second Person, and there is no other revelation. The creation of the world out of nothing we believe, they say; but it must be rightly understood. Nothing is not nothing; nothing means that which was nothing, namely, God, before His manifestation or effusion in the world. What do the Hindus reason in regard to the same subject? They speculate on the nature of God: whether He is nothing, or everything; whether He is gunman or nirgun; with qualities or attributes, or without; whether He can reveal Himself, or not. The Brahmins and Hindus know no other God but the world. A transcendental, pure, and holy God they can form no notion of.

“Again, Hegel and Strauss assert that everything which is reasonable—is as it ought to be. This is exactly what the Hindus argue, and this leads them to the second conclusion, namely, that there is no sin nor guilt, no accountableness, no personal responsibility. What men call sin is regarded only as a step to further development and greater improvement. All that is done is done by God: how, then, can there be sin or guilt? What an awful delusion is this! Look to the life the Hindus lead: no truthfulness, no gratitude, no chastity, no purity, a total abandonment to all vice and crime, no family life—and where there is no family tie, there can be no happiness, no blessing anywhere. How clever and cunning are the natives in all that concerns their own interests, in all worldly affairs and temporal matters; but how perverted and blind in all spiritual things, in all that concerns their immortal soul! The consequences of the Hegelian philosophy, where it has penetrated the mass of the people, have been just as fearful and baneful.

“The third point in which this modern philosophy coincides with Hinduism, is the distinct denial of a personal existence after death. What an arrogance, what a selfishness and pride of men, they exclaim, of worms of the dust, to claim a personal existence after death! As one drop of water loses its separate existence when falling into the ocean, so man, when dying, loses his personality in God, And what is the consequence of such a system of Pantheism? The complete degradation, the extreme ignorance and excessive misery of the lower classes of Germany, only lately brought to light by the efforts of the Home Mission, are more or less the consequences of a godless education, and of practical Pantheism..., Yea, the disciples of Hegel go even so far as to say, that Christianity has brought extreme woe over mankind, by oppressing the flesh, and that they desire to reinstate it in its rights! ‘Woe unto them,' the Bible says, ‘that call evil good, and good evil, that put darkness for light, and light for darkness.' Fearful in the extreme are the consequences of such a system, openly taught and widely spread. The fruits are described by the apostle Paul, in the latter part of the first chapter of his Epistle to the Romans. Are we wrong, are we too severe, when we call such a system diabolical, satanical? Education, without Christian principles and opposed to the Bible, cannot but do incalculable injury and great harm. The natives in this country, without education, are little elevated above animal existence. Train them up in all arts and sciences, products of [mind and taste] without giving them the Bible, the word of God, without implanting Christian principles, and you will train them to be enemies of God and man. The Hegelian philosophy shows us that the human mind under the most favorable circumstances, under the highest mental training and culture, when not influenced by the word [and Spirit of God, cannot advance a step towards obtaining truth, but must fall into the most dangerous errors, which again lead to a most immoral life and to vicious practices.” (Cited, with omissions, from Dr. Prochnow, in News of the Churches.)

Not to Company

V. 1 Cor. 5:9, 10. J. D. raises a question as to the accuracy of the English Bible in rendering ού τάντωs “not altogether.” He inquires whether the words are not rather to be viewed as emphatically negativing any companionship or intercourse with the worldly characters which are afterward enumerated, and whether verse 11 is not a supplement, regarding professed Christian brethren, who are to be yet more stringently dealt with. The best versions, ancient, and modern, which are accessible to me, (including the Syriac, Vulgate, Beza, Luther, De Wette, the Elberfeld, the Dutch, Diodati, Ostervald, the Lausanne, &c.,) appear to give the same sense as the authorized V., which, in my opinion, necessarily flows from the last clause of the verse. For what is ἐπεὶ ὀφείλετε ἄρα ἐκ τοῦ ἐξελθεὶν, but a proof of the futility of an absolute avoidance of worldly bad men?— “for then ye must needs go out of the world.” The apostle proceeds to show that the command not to keep company refers to communion in any way with guilty brethren so-called.

Notes Du Nouveau Testament: Review

1. Notes présentant des aperçus sur quelques e'pîtres du Nouveau Testament. Première livraison comprenant les épîtres aux Romains, aux Philippiens, et aux Colossiens.. (k Pau, rue St. Jacques, chez Lauga).

These notes, of less than 100 pages, 12mo., it is said in the introduction, were compiled from the MS. results of a meeting of Christian brethren at Vigan, in May, 1856. They are rather incomplete, as they were not taken with a view to publication. Nevertheless, many of our readers would peruse them with deserved interest. Take the opening as a sample. “To unfold the grace in virtue of which God accepts sinful man and places him, by his justification, in everlasting blessing; to show in this grace the wisdom and the acts whereby God magnifies His righteousness, His love, and all His perfections: such is the subject of Paul's Epistle to the Romans. As distinguished from the other epistles this takes man as a starting point. After an introduction, in which the gospel is seen to proceed from the grace of God (for without grace nothing exists), Paul enters on the question of man, and begins by considering his state under sin, before opening out the riches of God's love and of redemption by Jesus Christ. The epistle then is occupied with man, viewing him as an individual. The mystery of the Church, revealed in other epistles, offers doubtless very great interest; but the doctrine which looks at man or the Christian in his individual capacity, is of no less importance: it has its place in the truths of God. If the introduction (chap. 1:1-17) and the salutations which close the epistle (chap. 16) he omitted, the rest may be divided into three parts. In the first it presents the development of the means by which man can be introduced into the presence of God (chap. 1-8). In the second, it reconciles the exclusive promises made to Abraham with the leveling of all, Jews and Gentiles, established in the first portion (chap. 9-11). In the third, it terminates with exhortations and practical directions (chap. 12-16) The details which follow will put in a clearer light these first data” (pp. 1 2). Other remarks of a detailed nature are given, much valuable as exposition, with happy touches for the heart and somewhat for the conscience.

Notes of the Month: Charges Against Mr. Davidson

A circular letter has been issued by the Committee of the Lancashire Independent College, on the charges brought against Mark Davidson's contribution to the last edition of Horne's Introduction. It is a feeble and faithless production, fully justifying the fears which godly men outside the Congregational body could not but feel, when they noticed the insensibility to the glory of Christ which the Rivulet Controversy brought to light. For it soon became a question, not of Mr. Lynch, but of the London dissenting chiefs. Naturally they did and said what they could to convince others of their soundness in the faith. Letters, pamphlets, books, appeared by one or other of the fifteen, intended to convey strong impressions of their own orthodoxy. But no such effort has done away with the plain and utterly condemning fact, that they endorse, as Christian, and as in the main sound, a writer and writings which undermine nearly all the foundation truths of revelation. Altogether akin, and proving that the provinces are tainted, as well as the metropolis, is the Committee's judgment of Dr. D. It admits a number of petty faults, as hasty, incautious, inaccurate, and contradictory statements; it pleads the variety, peculiarity, and difficulty of his task; it urges that while many passages, taken by themselves, seem to indicate unsatisfactory views, others, and especially the author's oral explanations, fully satisfied his examiners that he holds all the vital truths impugned, and that he maintains the inspiration of the Bible! They characterize it as a “noble work,” throughout manifesting reverence for the authority of scripture. The result is an unanimous vote of continued confidence in Dr. D.'s theological views generally, with a request for published explanations, as soon and as kindly as a due regard to the case and his own position will allow; and this, in the face of the fact that both his colleagues have disclaimed his part of their joint-work with horror, and that his very publishers have felt it needful to deal with it as unworthy of confidence! Such an opinion from the Committee is to us a graver symptom than Dr. D.'s book.

Notes on Scripture: 1. Communion of Abraham With God

It is lovely enough to see God's ways of grace and condescension. He could come down to talk with Abraham, to eat with him. But for us it is another thing: we are called upon to feed on Christ Himself, “the bread of God that came down from heaven.”

“Promises end in myself; they minister to my need As thy day, so shall thy strength be.” This is most sweet and precious, and we feel the need of such a promise; but when we look at all these promises, we think of what we get for ourselves, and then our horizon is limited by what we need. In Gen. 15 God says to Abraham, “I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward.” The word “thy” would bring in the thought of self and of his need; it was what God was for Abraham, as One who could meet all his need: but in chap. 17, it is what He is Himself. The effect of God's revealing Himself to Abraham as his shield and his exceeding great reward was, that Abraham at once turns to the thought of his own need, and says, “Lord God, what wilt thou give me?” But directly God reveals Himself (Gen. 17), Abraham falls on his face, and God talks with him. It produces a closer, holier character of communion. And then, too, Abraham is not asking, “what wilt thou give me?” but he is able to intercede for others—he is taken out of himself It is sweet to get back to what it was at first, and to see God able, as it were, to come down to the tent door in the heat of the day. God came in the cool of the day to Paradise (Gen. 3) but it was in vain, as far as communion was concerned—Adam hid himself away. There should be a going of the soul to God, in a far more intimate way than to any one else. Communion with saints is precious; but I must have intimacy of communion with God above all; and communion of saints will flow from communion with God. Then the soul, getting into this wonderful place of communion with God, takes His likeness. “We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory.” While there is dependence upon God learned by need, still there is a deeper thing, a forming into the image of God by the soul's getting near to Him, and finding its delight in Him. This was, in a sense, true of Christ Himself. The ways of the Father were reproduced in His ways down here, through the communion which He had with Him.

There were two things in the way in which God revealed Himself in chap. 17. First, there is the outspreading of grace to the Gentiles— “thou shalt be a father of many nations;” because if He is the Almighty God He could not be cooped, if we may so say, in Israel. The second thing is, I will be a God “unto thee, and unto thy seed after thee;” —that is, more intimacy of communion, immediate relationship with God Himself. The nearer we get to Christ, the more shall we enter into this.

Wherever the heart was cast upon what GOD was in Himself, He must go beyond Israel: this title over-reached all the barriers. It is not the law, but in contrast with it—circumcision and promise without condition; though along with it, Abraham has principles made obligatory on him and his seed, which express the character of such as enjoy God's promises. (Compare John 7:22, and Rom. 4:10-13.) Circumcision set forth the mortification of the flesh; but this, not as a legal binding, though peremptorily enjoined as a confession of what man is, whatever may be the grace of God. In fact, nothing so condemns the flesh as that grace. As a matter of daily life, I am brought to trust in God Himself as the sole spring and source of all my blessing and strength. God revealed Himself to Abraham, and then said, “walk before me and be thou perfect.” “Here is what I am: now that is what you are to be in answer to me.” We see what a blessed thing it is to be loved of God. We have got God Himself in Christ, and that is our eternal life. When we see Christ walking through this world, our souls are attracted by the loveliness of all His ways; they delight in and admire all that we see, and get their life and happiness there. “Be ye imitators of God, as dear children.” As a child of God, I have got God's family likeness.

We do want promises; they are most precious, as meeting our need. But God's revelation of Himself is a creative power, which renews me into His own image. “I am thy shield;” —then Abraham's heart turns upon himself, and therefore he says, “Lord, God, what wilt thou give me?” God puts Himself forward as able to answer Abraham's wants, and then Abraham comes out with his wants. That is most beautiful and precious. It is what we have in 1 Chron. 17:24. David wished that the God of Israel should be all that God could be to Israel. In 2 Cor. 6:18, we get the two names by which God had made Himself known, Shaddi and Jehovah: but now that the Son has come, He takes the place of Father. He who was “the Almighty” to the patriarchs, and “the Eternal” to Moses and the people, will now be a Father to them.

Gen. 15 accordingly ends with the earth. (See verses 13-21.) It is the promise to Israel, in connection with the land—hence speaks of their suffering in Egypt, and of their deliverance by the divine judgment of their oppressors.

It is an astonishing favor that God should thus come down and put Himself at our disposal. He binds Himself to Abraham by covenant, by death. We get the same principle in Phil. 4, “My God shall supply all your need:” that is most sweet. Then Paul can say, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” But still the thought here is of need, and of the power of God to supply it all. Joy in God is communion, and a deeper thing. Presenting a want to God (as in Gen. 15) is not communion. “God talked with Abraham,” “his friend,” —that is communion. What a different idea we are apt to have of God! Communion with God is the retiring place of the heart. It is essential for a soul to be brought into perfect confidence in God Himself, in order to a walk with God.

Promise always comes before law, and raises no question of righteousness at all. There was no question raised here as to the fitness of Abraham. Law does raise the question of righteousness, and God therein assumes the character of a judge. But now, under grace, it is even more than promise. “We are made the righteousness of God in Christ.” Here, then, is an object worthy of God to delight in, and I bask in the sunshine. God looks at me just as He looks at Jesus.

Paul had seen Christ in glory—the pattern-man in heaven; and therefore he, as it were, says, “I cannot rest till I am that.” “The power of his resurrection” (Phil. 3) means, that no difficulties can stand in the way, because Christ has been raised from the dead. Everywhere and in all things the power of God to meet all need abounded. But afterward (Phil. 4) we come to “his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” (Just as in Gen. 17)

If I am risen with Christ, and am walking in the power of His resurrection, what is all the world to me? Paul would not merely not have his sins, but he would not have his own righteousness; he was raised clean out of everything that he had valued as a man and as a Jew. This we have to learn often in the midst of failure, and in the details of every day life. In principle the Christian is dead to all here, and has got a new life altogether. Christ never had a motive that this earth suggested; He walked through this world with divine motives. The thing in which the disciples were following Christ so tremblingly is what the apostle says he wants to have—viz., “to know the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.” He does not count himself to have apprehended, nor to have attained, till he gets to resurrection. He goes on getting more and more; but he has not got it in full till the resurrection. Just as we may imagine a lamp before us at the end of a straight path; we get more and more of the light as we go along the road, but not the lamp itself till we get to it. But the Christ that we get then is the Christ that we have got already.

It is well that there is a nature given to us independent of its development; there is such a poor display of it in our ways before men; there is not the “bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus.”

How wonderful for a man in prison like Paul to say, “he can do everything!” Many have triumphed in prison through God's grace, but still had a feeling as if they were shut out from service, and chastening was come upon them. Paul's being in prison may have been in some sense a chastening; but in his case the chastening came, to use a homely phrase, upon good stuff—upon a man with a single eye; and so it only purged away dross, and made him see clearer.

Notes on Scripture: 10. John 17:14

There are two great and evident consequences resulting from the place in which Christ has set us: one as looking towards the Father, the other as looking towards the world.

The first grand truth on which all is based, is, that He places us in the same condition, and where He Himself is. When the Lord Jesus was down here, He presented a double aspect, one towards the Father, and one towards the world: and just so is it with the saints now. What is true of Jesus is true also of those who believe in Him—His joy being fulfilled in them. He was a perfect witness for the Father, and the testimony of the saint in the world is for Him also (ver. 18.). The first part of this chapter shows the position of the saint before the Father, the end of it the saint's position towards the world. A blessed and wonderful thing it is, that the saints are brought by grace into the same place and position as Himself. He by right and title had it, we, by virtue of His imputed righteousness. It is testimony to the value of the redemption of Christ, and we cannot value it too highly. This exalts us not in a fleshly manner, but in the efficacy of what Christ wrought in resurrection. His disciples addressed John 20; 17— “My Father and your Father.” If I think of the state of my conscience before God, I remember God as a judge. I love the Lord Jesus Christ when I believe something about the value of the blood; but if I love the things of Christ, I soon find much in me that is not like Christ; and if there is uprightness of heart, it is a great deal easier to get at ease as to that which is past, than it is for what is at present going on. What I find in myself Now, is that which troubles me, and the conscience must get peace about this, because the affections are renewed. Even as regards the details of my conscience, as a saint, I have a holy conscience judging itself before God; so, the more unhappy a quickened conscience will be, till it is set at rest; for God is holy, the soul is sinful, and the Father sees sin. What does God do when coming in judgment? He put the blood on the door of the Israelite, and that being under this eye, the destroying angel cannot come in; he only sees the blood and passes over; he beholds the witness of the sin put away by the death of the Lamb. There is rest for the conscience by the blood. So sentence on evil has been brought in on God's part already. What meets His eye is the blood; a substitute has come in; God is satisfied in the execution of judgment. When there is uprightness of heart, there will never be peace till the conscience is clean before God: it can never rest till it has cleansing according to what God has wrought, for God wrought it, God gave it, and God makes us know His satisfaction in His own holiness. The holy desires which God has wrought in us, are not satisfied till all the demands of God are met.

Well, suppose the conscience to be at rest, what is God going to do with this people that He has redeemed? and what is the efficacy of this power? God has done it; He has not only put away the sin, but has brought us nigh unto Himself. The Son of man, the second Adam, has brought us into the same position with Himself. Thus, when risen, He says, “Go tell my brethren, I ascend to my Father, and your Father,” &c. The first Adam did this also, bringing us down to the same condition with himself.

But we are predestined to be conformed to the image of God's Son (Rom. 8). What does this depend on? It is from the value of what His redemption wrought, and the power of His quickening life in resurrection. And the way in which it is to be known, is by looking at the Lord Jesus Himself. Where has this redemption brought Him? It has placed Him, the risen man, back in the presence of the glory where He was before as God. He humbled Himself; (Phil. 2; Heb. 2;) wherefore, a name is given Him above every name. He is set at God's right hand. And here I can trace the result of that redemption which the Lord Jesus wrought, and which brought Him from the bosom of the Father, in placing Him there again.

Another point of value is the life-giving power. What is this life-giving power? “Because I live ye shall live also.” And (Col. 3:3, 4,) we that have to combat with the evil in us, and to keep down the flesh, have the life of Christ in us; yet the soul daily needs the comfort of the blood. Where has God placed us? If we have not our part in the first Adam, we must have it in the second Adam—in Christ. There is no place with God for any one out of Christ. God cannot have persons out of Christ with Him, nor in a half state of glory. There is no half glory with Him. We are sanctified in Christ Jesus, accepted in the beloved. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature,” &c. &c. If redemption had not given believers a title to be with Him, He could not say, (John 17:24,) “Father, I will,” &c. It is the discovery of the ruin of man that throws us on the redemption that is in Christ. We cannot go higher or lower than that. The utter inability of man shows the efficacy of the blood. In the world Christians are poor, needy, and feeble; but Christ speaks these things in the world that they might have His joy fulfilled in them. Faith and love are superior to all circumstances, which are no hindrance, unless indeed we are in circumstances, contrary to God, which is another thing. Faith has an object. There is living power in Christ. We are kept and enabled by Him to pass though all circumstances unhurt. How does Christ set us in this place of power? (v. 15.) Not taken out of the world, but kept from the evil of it. He sets us in the same position as Himself (v. 16). “They are not of the world” stands good, even as regards our path and position: Christians in the world, in the same place as Christ Himself! How was Christ not of the world? Because He derived not His life from it, but from the Father. The object of that life was the Father. All His walk testifies that the world bad nothing to do with the Father. But in passing through this world as the Faithful Witness, all His ways declared that He was not of it. When He who created the world was in it, it knew Him not. (1 John 3) “Behold what manner of love,” &c. The world knows us not because it knew not Him. Our hearts would find consolation here if in conscious fellowship with Jesus. The saint has to go through this world without the support of it, in secret with the Father, and sustained by Him. The world cannot know from whence we derive our life, and the saint has to pass through the world without having the power to show from whence it springs. It is a thing not seen.

If the world could have acknowledged “we know this is the Son of God,” it would have been a sort of sustaining power to Jesus; so with the saints, they are not only not understood, but not acknowledged—separated because their nature comes from God. If we are willing to take this place, we must have it altogether above and below, for the Father cannot own the world; so is it a place of trial for the saint, (5:17) not merely one act for all, but sanctified by the truth. The life of the saint down here is continued separation. We can put nothing between Christ and the soul, between the Head and the members. There is nothing between the unity of the Father and the Son, nor between the unity of the Christ and the Church; but there is such a thing as growing up into the Head, “Sanctified through the truth.” There is not only negative opposition to the world on the part of the Christian, but positive opposition. We have to pass through many trials. It is blessed to fall into temptation, &c. (not sinful temptation, of course, as in James); but there may be circumstances very humbling, without sin. Self is to be subdued. In these we see and learn God, when the soul has grown able to judge itself. He is able to uproot and cut off these things as under-suckers of the old stock. The Christian is not only not of the world, as knowing the character of it, but delivered from it (v. 19.) We see the position into which the saint gets. The Lord sets Himself apart, that the Spirit may take of the things of Christ and show them unto us, that we may be more like Christ in the world. The Holy Ghost takes of these things, and comes down in living power to speak of these things to our souls—Father, Son, and Spirit, all work together. There is the Father's love, and the Son's and Spirit's power given unto us. The Church and the individual saint stand before the world to show the efficacy of the Father's love, as the epistle of Christ. I am not speaking of what we have attained unto, but what we are designed to be—where we are set, as our place; and though we have not yet attained to it, wherever we go, there is the living testimony of what the Father's grace has made us. Israel ought to have been what the law required, but mark the difference, failure brought in condemnation to them. We want not righteousness before God; that has been done once. So Heb. 10:14, “By one offering,” &c.; and Rom. 8:4, “That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us,” &c.; also Dan. 9:24, “To bring in everlasting righteousness.” “But for manifestation down here, Paul appeals to the Corinthians for the recommendation of his apostleship. Every believer is a letter of recommendation of the grace of God, showing what God is. Christ was the living epistle of God on earth. If He took a child in His arms, or whatever He did, He manifested God. He says to us, “Be perfect as your Father,” &c., “Love your enemies,” &c.—i.e., let men see in you the Spirit of your Father. We have Christ's place before God, and in the world also—it may be in being hated or persecuted unto death. It is perfectly plain, if Christ sets us out for witnesses, that all question of our acceptance was settled. We must have union and communion with Him. If Christ had not been entirely one with His Father, He could not have represented Him. The Church is put in the place of Christ, and sent into the world to tell how great things God has done for her; being on God's behalf the epistle of Christ written by the Holy Ghost. We are now set in blessed grace, and persons judge of what the profession of Christ is by what Christians are (I do not say always uprightly). If living in communion with God we are not thinking of ourselves. Moses did not know his face shone when every one else did. He had been looking up out of himself and turned towards the earth, bearing upon Him the light of heaven.

I know so little of Christ, one may say, and this may be true; but every grace that is in Christ is in every saint, though not developed. Supposing you a babe in Christ, we may see many things in babes to admire and follow after. Where there is true lowliness of heart, I display God, as a babe manifesting Him; but if, as a babe, I am attempting to manifest Christ as a man, there will be failure. My wisdom will be, not to set myself up above that which I really am. If walking in true lowliness and manifesting that measure of Christ which is in us, there will be certain progress in us. It is in the presence of God that sin ought to be found out. I dishonor Christ if I trip in my path. If I see the secret sin in my heart, I shall be humble before God—I shall be humble before the world. If I detect pride, &c., in my heart, I shall go to God and confess it. I may not have power to prevent an unholy thought, but if I resist it, then the Spirit is not grieved thereby; but He brings the soul into communion and fellowship with Christ. This is a process of joy though humbling. If living with Him, He shows the good in Christ for me; so in our path in this present world, we are partakers of His holiness, being “changed into the same image from glory to glory” (ver. 21).

Remark, also, that unity is spoken of three times in this chapter, the first being absolute unity as having the very same nature as Christ, the communion of the same divine nature, and one Holy Ghost, and the practical unity that flows from this. “Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.” Now the Spirit dwells in us, and makes us one—not one amongst ourselves, but altogether in the Father and the Son. All question of what the individual is, is lost sight of, and the Holy Ghost, Father and Son have communion—we, by the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, are brought into the consciousness of this, all question of acceptance settled. 2nd, not only union, but communion. “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in them, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou has sent me.” 3rd, not merely quickened but He adds, (ver. 22), glory given to us that was given to Jesus. This is not essential union as the first, nor communion as the second, but thirdly, the display—Christ displayed in the Church and Christ displaying the Father. It is I in them and thou in me—beginning up there and coming down here—the full display of redemption when the world will see the oneness and the holy angels also, and we having glory and power from Christ, shall see the Father. The miracles at the beginning were a sample, the power of healing going forth from the Church. Christ will be admired in His saints—that holy city (Rev. 21:23, 24), in the light of which the saved nations will walk. The display is, “that the world may know,” &c. Now the world does not know us, but then the world shall know that we have been loved as Christ. But are we to wait to know till the world does? No, by faith, through the revelation of the Holy Ghost, we know now what the world will know by and by—we believe before we see. Supposing I have the consciousness that I am loved as the Father loved Jesus, what happiness will be then! My soul filled with this grace will show it out to others. What a spring of grace is there! The world knows it not, but if I am clothed with grace, I am armed with grace, I am living on the truth and enjoying it now. The Father's love gave Christ for you and to you. Would the world find the same grace in you and the same love (in kind, not measure) that Christ exhibited? Are ye faithful in bearing about this character of God before the world? God came down here in Christ—in man, that he might display the perfectness of divine dealing and divine tenderness in the form of man. If I am expecting something from you before I show love, I shall be disappointed, and I shall not manifest God. I must not wait for that, I am to act in grace. It did not matter in one sense what Christ met with from others; He was always satisfied with God. He had all His joy in God. If we were perfectly satisfied with God this would be perfection. Suppose we had no kind brother to cheer us up under trial, &c., so far as we are filled up with what God is, we shall be satisfied. Suppose you are left alone for two hours, if not in communion with the Lord, you crave after a book, &c., proving that God is not enough for you. In the early Church we find they were in favor with all the people. The man Christ Jesus grew in favor with God and man. He was always the servant of every one. The first thing that struck me some years ago in reading the gospel was, Here is a man that never did anything for Himself. What a miracle to see a man not living to Himself, for He had got God for Himself! Have we realized what we are in Christ, so as to have our hearts filled with Him? God has given us Christ's place in life, then adoption and glory. Therefore the life should show itself more clearly. Are we seeking His place now? Is there the active energy of the Spirit in you desiring to be all this? Well, that place you have: if merely a babe, or an old man, or a young man, is it not worth having? to be bearers of the character of Christ, to be trusted with the testimony of Jesus?

Again, there is one thing more in the last verses. He sums up the result of what He had said. Not only has He put us down here, one with Himself, but He must have us up there to see all His glory, to be with Him and to be like Him He counts on our love delighting in His glory.

“Righteous Father” (v. 25). This solemn word is the everlasting separation between the world and Christ. It will never see Him again. He says, as it were, The world will not have Me: they have rejected Me. If I am to be approved, those that rejected Me, because I manifested the Father, cannot have a common portion with Me; so now, Thou Father, must decide the point. Then we have God's answer (John 12:31): “now is the judgment of this world.” When the Holy Ghost comes (John 16), it is because of the rejection of Christ. He says I am here because Christ is there (ver. 26). “I have declared thy name,” &c. We get the Lord Jesus sustaining us in this—this is what He is doing now: communicating the knowledge of the Father to us, not only in grace, but in the fellowship of the glory. He declares it from the Father's house and throne, according to the knowledge He has of it as with the Father. The Father, by the Spirit, shows us Jesus at the right hand of God. “I in them” (ver. 26). The blessed Jesus manifest Himself (when done with the word, in a manner it knows not) to His saints. There is a difference between good and spiritual desires, and the power of the Holy Ghost taking of the things of Christ and showing them to us. There is not merely the new nature but the power of the Spirit wanted, if true to Christ. If I take up with other things (I do not mean sins), there is failure. An idle look even will grieve the Spirit, and I have lost the power of communion. Ours ought not to be a religion of regrets, but a rejoicing of heart continually, love being shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. God has set us here as the epistle of Christ. Let us not seek to be satisfied with looking at ourselves or others, but up unto Him continually, growing in His likeness more and more.

Notes on Scripture: 11. Psalm 16

What we find written in the Psalm is primarily connected with the Jews, or the Lord Jesus Himself, and particularly as Messiah. They have a special reference to the godly remnant in the latter day. Many of their expressions wholly belong to the Jews, and cannot be used by the Church. Hence, the true solution of those passages which have been such a terrible stumbling to Christians not seeing it. The saints of the present dispensation cannot rightly be looking for the destruction of their enemies, as a way of escape from their sorrows. But in the time of trouble such as never has been that is to come, it will be quite proper for the suffering Jews to look for judgments as a way of deliverance. They are God's promises, and what their hope rests upon. But the Church looks to be caught up and escape from sorrow by being with the Lord in the heavens, whilst it is quite true that she has His sympathy in her sorrow down here. But what the Psalm are chiefly occupied with is the suffering of the soul, the sorrows of the godly Jews and remnant, and God coming in judgment, as their deliverer, by the execution of vengeance on all their foes. Christ is viewed there as associated with Israel, and enters into all the sufferings of the holy remnant.

Then there are certain psalms which belong personally to Himself. They show out the character of the Spirit of Christ, as the Gospels show His walk and work. The Gospels display the One in whom was no selfishness. They tell out the heart that was ready for every body. No matter how deep His “own sorrow, He always cared for others. He could warn Peter in Gethsemane, and comfort the dying thief on the cross. His heart was above circumstances, never acting under them, but ever according to God in them. We see that He was always sensible to them, and often get in the Psalms expressions of what His heart felt in them, “I am poured out like water.” “My bones are out of joint.” “My heart is like wax.” He was the tried man; and, as man tried, I am called to follow Him. I should forget self, and the things belonging to self, in showing love to others. The true effect of being near Christ puts me into fellowship with Himself about others, instead of being under my own circumstances. How can I be turning my heart to the joys of one, and the sorrows of another, unless I am living close to Christ, and getting my heart filled with Him instead of self? What we find all through the life of Christ, as shown out in the Gospels, is the total absence of selfishness, never acting for self in any way whatever. He could rejoice with those who had joy, and grieve with those in sorrow. He could cheer, warn, or rebuke, as need arose. Whatever love dictated, that He did.

In Psa. 22 we see Christ alone, suffering under God, enduring the wrath due to sin, but continuing the righteous man, crying unto God, and justifying Him, even when forsaken by Him: or if we look at Him, as in Psa. 69 suffering rather from men, God is still His refuge. His heart goes through all the sorrow sin could bring on One who takes the sinner's place. He passed through the deepest exercises heart could endure, but He brings all to God. We find the greatest difficulty often in bringing our sorrow to God. How can I do so, the soul of some may be saying, as my sorrow is the fruit of my sin? How can I take it to God If it was suffering for righteousness' sake, then I would; but I am suffering for my sin; and can I, in the integrity of my heart towards God, take my sorrows to Him, knowing I deserve them? Yes; CHRIST has been to God about them. This, then, is the ground on which I can go. There has been perfect atonement for all my sins; Christ has been judged for them. Will God judge us both? No; I go to Him on the ground of atonement, and God can afford to meet me in all my sorrow, because Christ's work has been so perfectly done. In the main, all sorrow is from sin, and all help is grounded upon the atonement. There would be no possibility of my trusting in God, had not all His dealings with sin been put upon another.

God could not be indifferent about sin. Peter knew that, when he said, “depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” The holy character of God has been fully exercised in putting away sin. He has dealt with Christ about it, according to all that He is. I may have to taste the bitterness of its fruits; God may make me to feel the effects of my sin, because He is not going to judge me for it. “As sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness, unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ.” I get my conscience perfectly purged, through the blood of Christ shed in perfect love. The obedience of the One who bore my sins is mine. I am declared righteous through the righteousness of another. My heart is free: I can deal with God about my sin, because He has dealt with Christ on the cross about it. I can go to Him in all my sorrow on account of it. I can confess my sin; yea, more, I can say, “Search me, O God, and try me,... and see if there be any wicked way in me,” &c. Through grace I can take the place before God which Christ takes; and the ground for me is the atonement.

We find divine utterance in the Psalms for all our sorrows; and it is blessed to look at them in this way. Christ entered into the full effects of sin, as none other can, in a way we never shall; and when He had been at the “horns of the unicorn,” —the very transit of death, as it were—and had settled every question with God about sin, He could then say, “I will declare thy name unto my brethren; in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee.” We shall never lose Him as our companion—what a comfort! We shall follow Him to the glory. I am going to be with Him. His presence will be my delight. What a place the saints are brought to in Christ—all sorrow passed!

We get, in Psa. 16, expressions of the Lord's own proper joy—the joy of Him whom God called His fellow. Peter, on the mount of transfiguration, would have put Him on a level with Moses and Elias; but God said, No: He is my fellow, not man's. When the young man in the gospel went to Him, saying, “Good master,” —coming to Him as man—He said, “Why call me good? there is none good but God.” Goodness was not to be looked for in man, not even in Him if He had been only man. The saints are Christ's constant delight, and the poor sinner, who puts his trust in God, has the Lord Jesus for his comforter; and He, having been tempted, knows how to help, as none other can.

In the days of John the Baptist, all who repented came to the waters of baptism; Jesus did the same. He could not repent, but He would not be separated from them, and said, “Thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness.” I will take My place with you—with the saints in the earth.

What abundant consolation faith gives the man who hangs on God? Christ when down here could say, “I set Jehovah always before me;” and should not I? In the details of life, do I not constantly need Him? How continually I get moved by circumstances He alone can stay me. Christ once took the dependent place. He was raised by the power of the Spirit through God the Father. He could have raised Himself; death had No power over Him The Son was the Father's delight. The Father's heart was bound up in the Son. The Lord Jesus Christ was all the Father's delight.

Christ is in His presence as man and for man, as our forerunner and our way. It is so blessed to look at Christ as the way; it brings Him so near to us. As surely as I have, as a man, partaken of the first Adam's nature, and the consequences of his sin, so, as a believer, have I a portion in the second Adam. The Lord Jesus Christ is in the presence of. God for me. There are truly difficulties down here; but I shall be with Him where there are joys for evermore. God will be glorified as God, but He will be displayed as man also; and, as in Christ, we shall share the glory. How gracious and truly blessed those words, “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” He will be with His saints, and His saints with Him. They shall be conformed to His image; they shall be displayed in His likeness. We shall see Him, and we shall be like Him; and now, in the measure we are looking at Him, are we transformed into His image It is our positive portion, and in communion with Him we share what He is. His delight is with the saints; He entered into their deepest sorrow: and they shall share His joy and glory, as exalted on high.

How am I acting towards Him now? Do I take all my concerns to Him? Do I make Him the upper most thought in all my need, in every exercise of soul, and also in my seasons of joy? This is the way to learn Him, and to know the love that is in His heart.

There is no condition but what I may have Him for my companion in. He has gone into the fullest depths of my sorrow. “Deep crieth unto deep,” He could say. There is not a place faith cannot find Christ in. “Now that He ascended, what is it but that He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that He might fill all things.” But am I going on in the world with Him? Are my joys such as I can share along with Him? Am I walking with Him in my every-day life? If I am in sorrow, how far has He lifted me up? If I am resting on Him, He has lifted me up, and that is my positive privilege. The heart that is cast upon Christ finds constant comfort. The heart that keeps close to Christ gets nothing apart from Him. (See Psa. 23) If I have a question of want, I can say, there is no fear, “the Lord is my shepherd.” Am I saying, I am in green pastures, but they will be soon gone? Nay; He makes me to “lie down” in them. Then there are “still waters;” but may they not be shortly troubled? How is that, when Christ leads me beside them? My heart is sorrowful; I have wandered away from Him. That is sad. But Christ “restoreth my soul;” and if I have to walk through the valley of the shadow of death, He will be with me, and will comfort me. Ah! but I am in the land of my enemies. What of that? Christ prepares a table for me in their very presence. “Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.” “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” How blessed it is to look at the Lord in this way! He is our present and eternal joy. The time will come when all our sorrow will be over, but our Friend will remain. He is our tried and true Friend. He has entered into the deepest woes of our heart, and will make us the sharers of His joy forever. Our blessing, our safety, our hope is all grounded on the atonement. Is there a soul reading this who cannot rejoice in Christ, who knows Him not as his portion? Is there one who is saying, My sin is too great to be pardoned? To feel about your sin is right, but to be in despair about it is quite wrong. You are virtually saying, My sin is greater than the grace of God. You will not dare to say so if you are looking at Christ. Is Christ come short? Is grace beneath your need or above it?

Christ, is the portion of every poor soul who believes on Him. The atoning work is done. The blood of Jesus Christ God's Son cleanseth from all sin.

Notes on Scripture: 12. John 10

The more we study the ways of the Lord Jesus, the more we shall find what is unfathomable in goodness and beauty. In this chapter what extremes meet in reference to Him! What power, and yet what submission! There are heights of moral glory, and yet depths of humiliation. He presents Himself as the Son of God, and yet he enters in by the door, and has the porter opening to Him.

The person of the Lord Jesus will always afford food for our souls, if we study Him; and while we shall be humbled by it, we shall be strengthened with the consciousness that all that He is, He is for us. The heart delights in Him as one it can feel as its own, and yet admire and adore.

At this time the Lord had been fully putting Israel to the test. Chapters 8 and 9 show us how entirely He was rejected. In the eighth His word is rejected, and in the ninth His works. Thus the result of His coming is, that He is cast out, and He says, “For judgment I am come into the world;” and because of their treatment of Him, they are culpably guilty. “If ye were blind, ye should have no sin; but now, ye say, we see; therefore your sin remaineth.” Then He as much as goes on to say, “Not one bit of it is in vain.” He had come as He ought, and in the prescribed way— “by the door,” and God would own and make good his coming, though He was rejected and set at naught. All His sheep should come to Him, and He could say, “I have spent my strength for naught and in vain, and yet surely my judgment is with the Lord, and my work with my God.” If He had come acknowledged as a king, in glory and power, He would have had many follow Him; but now though He was the lowly and despised one, He would have all who really wanted Him. “He that entereth not by the door, but climbeth up some other way, is a thief and a robber.” All these great messiahs, setting up to be some one, (and there were plenty of them), were no better than “thieves and robbers.” We see at once here who it is that comes in by the door, and the first thing we find in Him is absolute submission; and notice that this, though true of the Shepherd, primarily, is true also of all who follow the Shepherd. All power and real effective service will be found to spring from entire submission. There was entire rejection for Him as He said, “They came about me like dogs.” — “My bones are like wax.” It was a painful thing thus to be met—everything deepening and darkening towards death as He passed along, but He went through it all, and thus entered in by the door in perfect submission. Those who found Him must be brought into the same place too, for it was there He found them. See the blind man: where did He find him? In the place of his rejection. Christ is before him when they “cast him out.” There is not one such poor sheep whom His voice cannot reach. He meets souls just where they need Him; in distress or difficulty, no matter what He suffers Himself for them. He went in by the door, and He was the true shepherd—not of Israel, indeed, for they as a people rejected Him; but He is the shepherd of the sheep—of all whose consciousness and hearts were touched. He is “the shepherd of the sheep.” Does He use His power in claiming them for Himself? No! He is the submissive one, coming in perfect dependence on God. Thus when Lazarus was dead, He did not move until He had a word from God to do it. He took the form of a servant, and a servant must be dependent and obedient.

“To him the porter opens.” “I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it.” He was here in complete humiliation, and this was His perfectness as man. God, His Father, does not spare Him the suffering, but He opens the door. As a fact He has come, and the sheep hear his voice. Though trodden upon by the goats in the way, He does not care for that, but goes after the sheep: and the sheep know that He cares for them—they understand that He has an interest in them, for they “hear His voice.” Why did He bear all the contempt poured upon His words and works, Son of God as He was? It was for the sake of the sheep. He was content to bear the trampling of the goats for the sake of the sheep amongst them. Then, again, there is perfect ability in Him to deliver them. He is not going to leave them amongst the goats. No: He leadeth them out. He draws their hearts: He makes Himself known to them, and charges Himself with their safety and deliverance. “He goes before them.” When He putteth forth His own sheep, He goeth before them. What, then, are there no dangers and difficulties in the way? With Israel, when brought out of Egypt, and over the sea, were they in no danger of losing their way? Yes: but there was the cloud to guide them. Was there no danger from enemies in the way? Yes: but there was the captain of the Lord's host. So now with His sheep, He leads them out, and does not leave them. He goeth before them, and time sheep follow Him See what certainty there is there. Persons may make this remark or that, but if I know it is Christ's voice, it is enough for me. “Let us go forth to him without the camp.” It is not now for me to remain in the Jewish fold. “He leadeth them out.” But some will say, How do you know it is not your own will you are following? It says, “They know his voice.” The sheep know the voice of Christ, and if they have not got His voice, they stop until they have. There is one voice they know. There are plenty of other voices, but they do not know them. Sheep are silly, stupid creatures, but they know the shepherd's voice—that one voice. The moment Christ's voice has reached me, it is enough: and this gives a peace and quietness in one's path that nothing else does. It is not great wisdom or great strength that gives this, but it is hearing the shepherd's voice and knowing it. If not the shepherd's voice, it is dreaded. “A stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him.” The shepherd does not frighten. He gives strength and confidence; and His voice having once reached the heart, nothing else is needed. This is when the eye is single. If double, a man is unstable in all his ways—not in one, but in all.

Never was divine love so shown forth as in Christ coming down so low: and it was because He is what He is, that He could do it. If Adam left His first estate, it was sin; but Christ could humble Himself, and it was the perfectness of love. While He entered in Himself by the appointed way, He is the door—the entrance to the way for everyone else. They would not, as Jews, have been warranted in leaving the Jewish fold, if Christ had not come as the door into another thing. He was the warrant, and so with us. By Him we may come out and enter in and find peace and blessing. What marks the sheep is that Christ is his door. He is the door for the sheep. They could not say they were saved, because Jews, though they had God's oracles and much advantage every way: it was only by Christ they could be saved. Mark, it says, “If any man enter in, he shall be saved.” It does not say, if they follow on well, but if they “enter in.” There must be the real hearing the voice of the good Shepherd. If he enters in, he is saved; and he cannot enter in without being saved. Then there is a path to follow, doubtless: but that is the result of being saved. We shall find it difficult oft-times, Satan tripping us up, the world and the flesh; but the door is to go in and out by. There is liberty of heart. I can go out into the world to testify of Christ, because my soul is in the safeguard of Christ Himself; not pent up in ordinances, nor in monasticism. There is food also, and they “find pasture.” They enjoy all the truth of God's word.

Christ's sheep thus have safety too. “None can pluck them out of my Father's hand.” They have liberty, “going in and out,” and they have all the food God can give. They “find pasture,” and what more will they have. They will get the glory by and by.

Then He contrasts Himself with all these false teachers that have gone before, and says of Himself, “I am come that they might have life.” Not content with giving life only, He gives it “more abundantly.” As in Romans, “They that receive abundance of grace shall reign in life; by our Lord Jesus Christ.” Here we serve in life; then we shall reign in life. What liberty, what abundance of all things it gives, when we see that He is our life! He gives life more abundantly. Cost what it will, He is intent on saving them. “He giveth his life for the sheep,” as though He said, I am devoted to you, and I am determined to get you out of this wretched place in which you are: I'll get you out, cost what it will. “I am the good shepherd, and I lay down my life for the sheep.” He has so given his sheep life, and now He will give all that they want in life. (See the contrast of these hireling shepherds). It might be said, if He has given His life for them He can do nothing more. But no I it is not so with Him. See verse 14, “I know my sheep and am known of mine.” There is not only caring for the flock as a whole, but for the individual sheep— “and am known of mine.” Paul knew He loved the Church, “and gave Himself for it;” and he knew also that He loved him and gave Himself for him. Then there is as true a relationship of love between Christ and the sheep now, as there is between Him and His Father. (v. 15). Further, “There shall be one flock, one shepherd.” Jew and Gentile were to be brought into the Church of God. “Therefore doth my Father love me.” He says, “because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.” This shows the wonderful value of the work done. it is a motive for the Father's love! Yet however low He might go, even to the laying down His life, He could take it up again. He had power [title or authority] to do it; but He was in the place of obedience. “This commandment have I received of my Father.” He had power, but He was the obedient servant. What a difference there is between Him and us! We could not take up our lives again, if we laid them down. It was in virtue of His divine title and power, as well as love, that He came so low for us.

Ver. 24 (and downwards) shows us the different ways in which the Pharisees heard and received His sayings to what His sheep do. Christ's voice has power in the heart, and that is the secret of the difference between them and the goats. And see the full security and extent of blessing they have in virtue of the Shepherd's title and power. “I give unto them ETERNAL LIFE.” It is a life that is eternal, not that which is to be taken away again. Whoever has heard Christ's voice has eternal life. It must be eternal life that Christ gives; for if one of His sheep could perish, Christ must perish. And it must be a holy life, too, that He gives, for the same reason. What Christ gives must be holy, for He is holy. “They shall never perish.” A sheep is a perishing thing, but His sheep do not perish. We may fall asleep, or we may be changed; but this same life that we have now in Him, and with Him, we shall have then at His coming. There are two points in which this blessed security consists. First, Christ is in them, as their life; secondly, “None shall pluck them out of my hand.” They are in His hand. The Father hath given us to Christ, and He is to do the work for us. The Father's love is concerned, and He is able to do it all. You must get some one more powerful than God, if you can be plucked out of His hand. The Father sent the Son and the Son has sent the Spirit, so that all three are concerned in our salvation. There is, then, salvation, and eternal life for the sheep; but how are we to know who are the sheep? They are those who know His voice.

Then we get the sweet thought that as the shepherd, He leads them all the way. It is hearing Christ's voice that distinguishes the Christian, though there are sorrows and troubles, difficulties and perplexities. Hearing Christ's voice has absolute authority and power for him “Perplexed, but not in despair.”

How wonderful that He should have thus come down to let us hear His voice! How precious here to be taught that Jesus and the Father are one! that the glory of the Son's person is identified with the security of the sheep, both against inward weakness and outward violence, as it is with the height and depth of the love of which the sheep were the objects. The Father and the Son are one in divine essence, as they are in efficacious love to the sheep.

Notes on Scripture: 2. Abraham and Lot

The destruction of Sodom is a figure of what will happen when the Lord comes. They carried themselves as if the world was to last forever. Such is still the great sin of the world, and what marks the incredulity of the heart (2 Peter 3) Men make all possible arrangements for the future; and yet, since the death of Jesus, the world cannot count upon a single day. God is waiting till the iniquity of the earth reaches its height, till it is all out and open before He exercises judgment. The world takes advantage of this. “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil” (Eccl. 8:11). It is the principle and the practice of infidelity all through: it was the history of the antediluvians and of the doomed cities of the plain (Luke 17:26-30.)

The Church, the Christian, has properly but one object—Christ in heaven, and therefore is called to be in heart separated from everything here below. Abraham, as far as he was a stranger and pilgrim on earth, is the type of the faithful. (Heb. 11) He saw the promises afar off, was persuaded of them, embraced them, and confessed himself a pilgrim here below. Of such God is not ashamed to be called their God. He would be ashamed to own as His people those who make this world their fatherland. “And truly if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned: but now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God.” Abraham had only a burying-place in the land of Canaan. As he followed God in the main faithfully, God took a particular interest in him: Abraham is called “the friend of God.” There is no uncertainty in his movements. He quits Ur of the Chaldees; he and his leave Haran subsequently “they went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the Land of Canaan they came.” Luke 17:32.

On the other hand, Lot's wife, (“remember Lot's Wife,”) left Sodom in bodily presence, not in heart. Her judgment is recalled to mind by the Savior. Which of the two does Christendom resemble? His people are not in a state which God can own, if they do not say such things as Abraham, if they say them not in deed and in truth.

God communicates His thoughts to Abraham, and Abraham responds, in his measure, to such grace on God's part. He is not here, as in Gen. 15 asking something for Himself; he intercedes for others. There is no lovelier scene than the opening one of Gen. 18 upon which the infidel spues his wretched materialism, and proves his moral incapacity to appreciate God's gracious condescension to his “friend.” “This did not Abraham.” Accustomed to the ways and words of God, he quickly feels the divine presence; yet he beautifully waits till the Lord is pleased to discover Himself, acting all the while with a touching and instinctive deference. Indeed, such intimacy was not only most suitable to the infancy of man in the revealed blessings of God, but it was the fitting prelude and preparation for Abraham to learn the high privileges in store for him; above all, for that precious communion which rejoices in another's blessing, and sympathizes in another's sorrows. God therein assured Abraham, in such a way as he could not possibly mistake, of His interest and His confidence in him. “And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in Him? For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him” (Gen. 18:17-19). Abraham enjoys the closest intercourse with Jehovah, who reveals His counsels to him. Not only is he told afresh, with fuller light, of the promised seed, but he learns from God the imminent destruction of Sodom.

Now God has displayed other, richer, and more spiritual means of assuring our hearts of His love but nothing could be more appropriate then than His dealings with Abraham. He appears to him in the plains of Mamre. He comes before the tent door, enters, converses, and walks with him. He wanted to confirm the heart of Abraham practically; and He succeeded, we need scarcely add. The effect appears in pleading before Jehovah. For us, through infinite grace, He has provided something better still. He has come and manifested Himself in Jesus. And we have the certainty that we have, in the man Christ Jesus, one who ever intercedes for us; yea, we see ourselves in Jesus before God; and the Holy Ghost gives us an intimacy with God, which even Abraham did not and could not enjoy, because the basis which renders it possible was not yet laid. It is too likely that we have made little progress in using this nearness to God; but such is our standing privilege: though it be not a palpable visible thing, the reality of this intimacy is not the less great. The counsels of God are revealed to us in His word, and the Holy Spirit is given to us that we may know and enjoy them. What we fail in is the simple and strong faith of Abraham.

Abraham does not dread the presence of Jehovah; such fear is the effect of sin. If we have seen the glory of God in Jesus, the divine presence becomes sweet to us: we find there full strength and confidence. To know Him is indeed life eternal, and His presence makes us happy with the deepest possible joy.

When a soul is in this confidence God shares His thoughts, as here He treats Abraham as a friend, telling him even what concerns the world. With a friend we do not speak of mere business, but of what we have on our heart. Intercession is the fruit of the divine revelation and fellowship. Abraham, separate from the world, and with the Lord upon the mountain, communes of the judgment which was about to fall upon the world below. The Church is, in a still more positive and complete way, separated to God from the world, and beloved of Him God confides to the Church His thoughts—not merely what He means to do for her, but what is hanging over the world. The Son of man is going to judge the quick as well as the dead; and He has told us of it.

God shows the world the utmost patience. He lingers; He is not slack as some men count slackness, but is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. If His love be displayed to us in ways beyond and more spiritual than that which the elders tasted, His forbearance to the guilty world is also more marked. If a man had to govern the world, he could not endure its ingratitude and iniquity for an hour. God brings His friend, in some degree, to enter into His own long-suffering, and even reproduces it, as it were, in him. The angels, in the guise of men, turn their faces and go toward Sodom; but Abram stood yet before the Lord. Such also is the portion of the Church—to stand before the Lord and learn His purposes and thoughts. She is familiar with His love for her, and has the consciousness of it. She intercedes for the world, in the hope that there is still room for grace. The heart lives above the circumstances to draw upon the love that is in God. If we cannot intercede for a person, the sin is stronger than our faith. When we are practically near God, the Spirit which sees the sin intercedes for the sinner Abraham is silent (ver. 32, 33), “and the Lord went his way, as soon as he had left communing with Abraham;” but he did more than Abraham asked. He withdrew Lot from Sodom and saved him. Nothing could be done till Lot was safe. (Gen. 19:16, 22.) God's eye was upon him. What blessedness to be able to reckon on His love for the righteous!

Abraham persevered in intercession, though he stopped short of the fullness of God's mercy. We know not, as God knows, all He is going to do. Nevertheless we may intercede with faith. Abraham grows bold as he goes on his confidence increases. In result he knows God much better than before. The peace of God kept his heart. The fruit of it all is seen in Gen. 19:27, 28, where Abraham gets up early in the morning, to the place where he stood before the Lord, and looks down on the plain, now smoking like a furnace. From far above he sees the effects of the utter destruction. Such is our position if we are heavenly. It is thus that we see the judgment of the wicked. Lot and his daughters had been spared—saved so as by fire—not to their honor, but through the faithful care and tender mercy of the Lord. It was his unfaithfulness, indeed, that had placed Lot there; it was his unmortified desire after the good things of the world. “And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord... Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan” (Gen. 13); then he pitched his tent toward Sodom. Next he dwelt in Sodom. (Gen. 14) On the eve of its downfall, “Lot sat in the gate of Sodom,” in the place of honor there! (Gen. 19:1) sad example of the earthly minded believer in the path of declension! Such men dishonor the Lord, and pierce themselves through with many sorrows.

Notes on Scripture: 3. Jesus the Author and Finisher of Faith

All the witnesses for God spoken of in Heb. 11 are for our encouragement in the path of faith; but then there is a difference between them and Jesus. Accordingly the apostle here singles Him out of all.

If I see Abraham, who by faith sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange country, or Isaac, who blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come, or Jacob on his dying bed of blessing and worship, they have all run their race before; but in Jesus we have a far higher witness. Besides, in Him there is the grace to sustain us in the race. Therefore in looking unto Jesus we get a motive and an unfailing source of strength. We see in Jesus the love which led Him to take this place for us, who, “when he putteth forth his own sheep, goeth before them.” For, if a race is to be run, we need a fore-runner. And in Jesus we have got One who did run before us, and has become the Captain and Completer of faith, in looking to whom we draw strength into our souls. While Abraham and the rest filled up in their little measure their several places, Christ has filled up the whole course of faith. There is no position that I can be in, no trial whatever that I can endure, but Christ has passed through all and overcome. Thus I have got one who presents Himself in that character which I need; and I find in Him One who knows what grace is wanted, and will supply it; for He has overcome, and says to me, “Be of good cheer: I have overcome the world” —not, you shall overcome; but, I have overcome. It was so in the case of the blind man (John 9:31, &c.) who was cast out of the synagogue; and why? Because Jesus had been cast out before him. And now we learn that, however rough the storm maybe, it does but throw us the more thoroughly on Christ, and thus that which would have been a sore trial does but chase us closer to Him Whatever turns our eye away from Christ is but a hindrance to our running the race that is set before us. If Christ has become the object of the soul, let us lay aside every weight. If I am running a race, a cloak, however comfortable, would only hinder and must be got rid of: it is a weight, and would prevent my running. I do not want anything to entangle my feet. If I am looking to Jesus in the appointed race, I must throw the cloak aside: otherwise it would seem strange to throw away so useful a garment. Nay, more; however much encouragement the history of antecedent faithful witnesses in Heb. 11 may give, our eye must be fixed on Jesus, the true and faithful One. There is not a trial or difficulty that He has not passed through before me, and found His resources in God the Father. He will supply the needed grace to my heart.

There were these two features in the life of Christ down here. First, He exercised constant dependence on His Father: as He said, “I live by the Father.” The new man is ever a dependent man. The moment we get out of dependence, we get into the flesh. It is not through our own life (for, indeed, we have but death) that we really live, but by Christ, through feeding on Him In the highest possible sense He walked in dependence on the Father, and for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame. Secondly, His affections were undivided. You never find Christ having any new object revealed to Him so as to induce Him to go on in His path of faithfulness. Paul and Stephen, on the other hand, had the glory revealed to them, which enabled them to endure. For when heaven was opened to Stephen, the Lord appeared in glory to him, as afterward to Saul of Tarsus. But when the heavens opened on Jesus, there was no object presented to Him, but, on the contrary, He was the object of heaven; the Holy Ghost descends upon Him; and the voice of the Father declares, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” Thus, the divine person of the Lord is always being witnessed to. The apostle here lays hold of the preciousness of Christ in the lowliness into which He has come; but he never loses sight of the glory of Him who has come there. So when I get Christ at the baptism of John, I see Him at the lowest point (save in another way on the cross); and finding Him there, I find all the divine compassion of His heart.

Notes on Scripture: 4. the Call of the Bride

In Abraham, as being the depositary of the promises of God to the patriarchs, we find the fundamental principles of the believer. Abraham having offered up his son Isaac, and having received him back, this act gives us the type of the resurrection of Jesus, who becomes like Isaac, heir of all the goods of His Father. Rebekah, type of the Church, is called to be the bride of Isaac risen. Afterward in Jacob we have the typical history of the Jewish people.

In Abraham we have the principle of man's relationship with God, pure grace without law. Hagar is introduced as a figure of the law coming in. Isaac, raised from the dead in figure, shows us Christ, the Head, having accomplished His work, and being in the position to maintain all the results of the divine counsels.

In this chapter Abraham sends Eliezer to seek a wife for Isaac. This represents the Holy Spirit sent by the Father to seek the Church, “the bride, the Lamb's wife.” It is not Isaac who goes to look for a bride. No more does Christ return to this earth to choose a Church for Himself. Rebekah must leave her country, and come to the land of promise. In this chapter we see the features of the Holy Spirit's work, and how a soul is conducted under His guidance. This is what we are about to see in Eliezer and Rebekah.

Verses 1, 2. Abraham, having become old, says to the eldest servant of his house, that ruled over all that he had, “Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh; and I will make thee swear by the Lord, the God of heaven, and the God of the earth, that thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell.” The first thing which is presented to us here is Eliezer, who has the superintendence of all the goods of his master. He is not the heir—the son is the heir. Thus the Holy Spirit has the disposal of all things. He takes of the things of Christ and shows them unto us, i.e., to the Church. Verse 5. “But thou shalt go unto my country, and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son Isaac. And the servant said unto him, Peradventure the woman will not be willing to follow me unto this land: must I needs bring thy son again unto the land from whence thou earnest? And Abraham said unto him, Beware thou that thou bring not my son thither again.” It is impossible that there should be any relation between Christ risen again and this world. Isaac does not go for Rebekah, but she must come to him. Abraham gives directions to his servant; thus the first thing is to be directed by the word of God. Instead of making further inquiries, Abraham's servant makes ready and goes off to Mesoptamia, to the city of Nahor, with no other information (verses 9-11.)

It is important that we should act in the same manner. Natural wisdom can form a judgment up to a certain point; but it takes the soul away from the presence of God, even when we are doing things according to God: if we begin to deliberate, there is hesitation; we take the counsel of flesh and blood. The first thing is to put ourselves in the presence of God; without that, there is neither wisdom nor power; whereas, placed in the path of blessing, we get from Him all the intelligence which we shall need. We observe this in the journey of Abraham's servant.

Eliezer says, “O Lord God of my master Abraham.” He does not say “my God.” The promises had been made to Abraham, and God had revealed Himself as the God of Abraham. Here the servant shows himself in entire dependence, and we find him in the path of promise, not exalting himself, but acting according to the counsels of God in entire dependence, and not pretending to have anything, except where God had placed the blessing; for the promises had been made to Abraham. For us this blessing is in Christ, and there is the answer to our requests; nor do we desire to obtain anything sate where God has put His blessing, namely, in the path of the obedience of faith.

Eliezer addresses the God of his master Abraham praying him to favor his master: “O Lord, let it come to pass that the damsel to whom I shall say, Let down thy pitcher, I pray thee, that I may drink; and she shall say, Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also, let the same be she that thou hast appointed for thy servant Isaac; and thereby shall I know that thou hast showed kindness unto my master.” (O Lord, thou must act, and I must know by that the one whom thou hast designed to be the wife of thy servant Isaac; the one who will do these things will be the one whom thou hast chosen.)

“And it came to pass, before he had clone speaking that, behold, Rebekah came out, who was born to Bethuel, son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham's brother, with her pitcher upon her shoulder. And the damsel was very fair to look upon, a virgin, neither had any man known her: and she went down to the well, and filled her pitcher, and came up. And the servant ran to meet her, and said, Let me, I pray thee, drink a little water of thy pitcher. And when she had done giving him drink, she said, I will draw water for thy camels also, until they have done drinking. And she basted, and emptied her pitcher into the trough, and ran again unto the well to draw water, and drew for all his camels. And the man wondering at her, held his peace.” Why any doubt? Why does he hesitate, since his request has obtained such an answer? Here is the reason. Whatever may be the apparent manifestation of the hand of God, there is a positive rule in the word to which the Christian must pay attention, and which he must not neglect, because of his weakness in discerning what is of God. Faith looks to the power of God, but judges all by the word; for God must act according to His word; and the servant, being in communion with God, ought to act in this thought; and even when there may be signs, he should decide nothing until the will of God be clear according to His word. He must be able to say, “This is indeed according to God.”

“And it came to pass, as the camels had clone drinking, that the man took a golden earring of half a shekel weight, and two bracelets for her hands, of ten shekels weight of gold; and said, Whose daughter art thou, tell me, I pray thee: is there room in thy father's house for us to lodge in? And she said unto him, I am the daughter of Bethuel, the son of Milcah, whom she bare unto Nahor. She said moreover unto him, We have both straw and provender enough, and room to lodge in.”

God had perfectly answered the desire of Abraham.

Eliezer, for his part, sees that he has been heard. Before going farther, before even entering the house, inasmuch as he had recognized the intervention of God in the whole of this business, he bowed himself and worshipped the Lord, and said, “Blessed be the Lord God of my master Abraham, who hath not left destitute my master of His mercy and His truth: I being in the way, the Lord led me to the house of my master's brethren.” We see the same thing in Daniel; he betakes himself to prayer with his companions; and when Daniel has received the revelation of the dream, before presenting himself before the king, who had commanded that he should come, he blesses God for having revealed to him that which the king wanted to know. It is always thus when God is in our hearts; we feel that it is He who is acting, and we thank Him.

“And the damsel ran and told them of her mother's house these things. And Rebekah had a brother, and his name was Laban; and Laban ran out unto the man, unto the well. And it came to pass when he saw the earring and bracelets upon his sister's hands, and when he heard the words of Rebekah his sister, saying, Thus spake the man unto me, that he came unto the man; and, behold, he stood by the camels at the well. And he said, Come in, thou blessed of the Lord; wherefore standest thou without? for I have prepared the house, and room for the camels.”

Laban and Bethuel, after having heard Abraham's servant narrate the circumstances, acknowledge that the thing proceeds from the Lord, and say, “We cannot speak unto thee bad or good.” (Verse 50.) Thus, if in the circumstances of our Christian life we act in entire dependence on God, He will make our way plain, and will even soften our enemies, on account of this dependence on Him in which we live. Because we have set the Lord before us, He will be always at our right hand.

If I have asked anything of God, and have received His answer, I then act with assurance, with the conviction that I am in the path of God's will; I am happy and contented. If I meet with some difficulty, that does not stop me, it is only an obstacle which faith has to surmount. But if I have not this certainty before I begin, I am in indecision, I know not what to do. This may be a trial of my faith, or it may be that I ought not to do what I am doing. I am in suspense, and I hesitate; even if I am doing the will of God, I am not sure about it, and I am not happy. I ought therefore to be assured that I am doing His will before I begin to act.

Observe, in passing, that God disposes all things according to the desire of Eliezer. This is what necessarily happens to all those who have their delight in the Lord. All the wheels of God's providence go in the way of His will which I am carrying out. The Holy Spirit, by the word, gives me the knowledge of His will. This is all that I want. God causes that all things should contribute to the accomplishment of his will. If, by spiritual intelligence, we are walking according to God, He assists us in the carrying out of His will, of His objects. There is need of this spiritual discernment, that it may abound in us in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. “If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.” I know not whither that will lead me, but this is the step I must take to proceed in the path in which I have to walk.

Abraham's servant enters into the house. “And there was set meat before him to eat: but he said, I will not eat, until I have told my errand.” Laban said, “Speak on.” What firmness of character in the servant! Look at a man who is not decided; he consults this one and that one, when it is a question of how he is to act; and even having some desire to do his own will, he will rather seek counsel of those who have not as much faith as himself. Paul took counsel neither of flesh nor blood. He saw that it was Christ who called him, and he went forward.

Eliezer, taken up with his errand, does not accept the offer of food which is made him. He does what he has to do. One secret of the Christian's life is, as soon as he knows God's will, to do his work, to occupy himself with it, to let no delay interfere with it, even to satisfy the wants of his body; this is the effect and the sign of the Holy Spirit's work. Eliezer wishes to deliver his errand. And what was it that was in question? The interests and the honor of Abraham his master. He had entrusted to him the interests of Isaac his son. And God has committed to us, down here, the glory of Jesus His Son; and this glory occupies us by the Holy Ghost which is given to us; that is, where there is a single eye—spiritual discernment, according to the position in which God has placed us. If we are there, there is no hesitation; being in our place, we act with liberty and joy. If I think about my convenience, my interests, about what concerns myself, or my family, (there are a thousand reasons which are contrary to a prompt obedience,) this is to consult flesh and blood. But if I inquire what is the interest of Christ, the thing will be instantly decided. If I think of anything else, I have not at heart this glory which is entrusted to me, nor confidence in Him who has placed me there.

Eliezer thinks always about Abraham, who had entrusted everything to him; his thoughts are upon this, as he sets forth before Rebekah the privileges and the good-tidings of his master's house.

If our hearts are filled with the Holy Spirit, it will be the same with us. It is very important for us to bear in mind, that God has confided to us the glory of Jesus. He had no need of us; besides, what can we do? It is He who works in us, and we have but to let Him act. It is His will to be glorified in us by the presence of the Holy Spirit. It is the same thing we see in those to whom the five and the ten talents were committed. Confidence in the master displays itself in the decision of the servant; as here Eliezer says, “I will not eat until I have told my errand.”

This pre-occupation with his master's glory makes him refuse to take any food until his errand was performed. This is to do God's will. He tells Laban about the matter, and how he had been guided, and that, without using any argument, without saying “It would be wise to act in such and such a way,” but with simplicity committing to God the issue of the affair. “Then Laban and Bethuel answered and said, the thing proceedeth from the Lord.” If, instead of spending our time in reasoning, we were more simple and obedient, and presented things as the Holy Ghost tells them to us, the result would be better. But we often substitute our human wisdom for the commands of God. Often the things which are the most simply said produce the greatest effect. Peter said to the Jews, “You killed the prince of life.” That is what you did, and what I have to tell you on the part of God (Acts 3)

If we apprehend things and present them to men such as they are in the sight of God, the Holy Ghost accompanies this testimony, and the conscience is reached. Thus men think neither of Peter nor of John (except so far as they recognize them to be men of intelligence according to God, according as God had manifested them to themselves); it was God whom they had found, or rather who had found them. When God gives us this simplicity, which makes us occupy ourselves with things in the manner in which God sees them, we ought to speak to any one according to the state he is in before God. If I feel that he is lost, I tell him so simply, and the most simple addresses are the best and the most blessed.

“And he did eat and drink, he and the men that were with him, and tarried all night; and they were up in the morning, and he said, Send me away to my master. And her brother and mother said, Let the damsel abide with us a few days, at the least ten; after that she shall go. And he said, Hinder me not; seeing the Lord hath prospered my way; send me away, that I may go to my master.”

We see Eliezer asking that he may hasten his departure; he must make haste in this business, so as to conduct Rebekah to his master's son; and having accomplished his mission, he says, “Delay me not.” He does not trouble himself about Laban's house, and he gives no consideration to his request; he does not stop on account of it. His love for his master makes him consider his orders before everything else.

It is in this generally that weakness is shown; we spare the flesh and neglect what we owe to God: in reality, we are sparing ourselves through fear of not being agreeable to others. I have seen men who are faithful in what they have to say to others, blessed of God, when they speak with simplicity and without hesitation.

“And they said, We will call the damsel, and inquire at her mouth, And they called Rebekah, and said unto her, Wilt thou go with this man? And she said, I will go.” There is no hesitation here. So likewise, through the influence of the Holy Spirit, the bride says, “I will go.” she makes up her mind instantly, in the most decided manner, and leaves all. “I will go,” she says.

Now let us examine Rebekah's position: she had neither the house of Laban nor that of Isaac. It is the same with us. We have neither the earth, on which we are, nor heaven, to which we are going. Rebekah has left everything, and said “I will go.” Eliezer, type of the Holy Ghost, talks to Rebekah, during the journey, of that which there is in the house of her bridegroom's father. Precious conversation for the soul which needs to be encouraged by the view of these things, so as to be able to endure the fatigues and difficulties of the journey, and not to think of the house and the country from whence they came out! For Rebekah is going, like us, across the desert; and Eliezer, the faithful servant, who is leading her, takes care to comfort her, and to speak to her of the precious things which are in the father's house—to repeat to her the greatness and power of the father, and that “He hath given all that he hath to his son.”

For us this servant sets forth the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, who likewise communicates to us all that there is in the Father's house for those who are the bride of Christ. It is He who takes of the things of Christ and shows them unto us. It is He who leads us into all truth, while we are crossing the wilderness of this world; and who teaches us all things.

If Rebekah had hesitated, and had thought about the country which she had left, she would have been unhappy; she would have had neither Isaac's house nor her father Bethuel's. To have left all, and to have neither one thing or the other, her heart, isolated in the wilderness, would have felt itself in an untenable position, But she has left all; and, conversing with Eliezer, she occupies herself with what interests her heart, and raises it above the things winch she has now left forever. And she journeys in peace towards the abode of her bridegroom. The Christian who is not spiritual, but rather worldly, has a sorrowful lot; he cannot be happy if seeking after the world. The worldly man has at least something; he makes trial of these passing pleasures, and finds in them his joy, worthless as it may be; for in truth this joy does not satisfy. But the Christian finds in these things only uneasiness, because he bears about a conscience affected by the Holy Spirit. If he wishes to take his pleasure in the things of earth, and his heart hangs back from following the Lord, he is unhappy; he cannot chide a conscience which torments him; and as he has not listened to the Holy Spirit's invitation, and has not obeyed it, there is no joy for him. The spiritual things, which ought to have constituted his joy, produce reproaches in his heart when he turns towards them. But we have this grace of Him who calls us, and who leads us, if we are faithful, in an uniform path, for the sake of His name. If we sin, that does not put us under the law, but we have an advocate with the Father, who intercedes for us; and God, who is faithful, cannot fail when He is appealed to. “What wilt thou do with thy great name?” Besides, His glory is involved in lifting us up again; and this is grace. Yes, we have a Savior who intercedes with the Father for us, and who works to bring us back to the gracious God, who has begun this work in us, and will perfect it till the day of Christ, accomplishing all that concerns us. Eliezer conducts Rebekah to her bridegroom. So also the Holy Spirit conducts us to the end and goal. What Rebekah first perceives is Isaac, and Isaac takes his bride into his mother's tent. Possessing the bridegroom, she no longer takes thought for anything, she thinks no longer of the possessions, but of the bridegroom himself.

The important business was to bring the bride to the bridegroom: and, as to what regards us in the type which is here presented to us, God seeks us in this world of sin: He finds us; He desires that we should not delay to follow Him; when we have said, “I will go;” and He leads us into the presence of Jesus. The Holy Spirit accompanies us in the journey to help us, to comfort us, to tell us of the blessings and glory which await us, and to introduce us into the presence of Jesus, our heavenly bridegroom.

This may be modified, as regards the manner, by various circumstances; but such is the effect of the power of the Holy Ghost. The efficacious principle of our calling is that we should freely decide to allow ourselves to be led by Him, to walk with good-will; knowing that, being in this manner led, we shall arrive at the wished-for end: “So shall we ever be with the Lord.”

May God grant us all this mercy. Amen.

Notes on Scripture: 5. Our Joy in Heaven

Luke 9:28-36 (No. 5)

LET us look a little at this scripture, as showing what our joy in the glory will consist of. We have the warrant of 2 Peter 1:16 for saying that the scene represents to us the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. And this is what we wait for. Our souls are not in a healthy state unless we are waiting for God's Son from heaven. The Church is not regulated in its hopes by the word and Spirit of God, unless it is looking for Him as Savior from heaven, (Phil. 3) And this passage, as disclosing to us specially what will be our portion when He comes, is important to us in this respect. There are many other things in the passage, such as the mutual relations of the earthly and the heavenly people in the kingdom. These it might be very instructive to consider, but this is not our present purpose, which is to consider what light is here afforded on the nature of that joy which we shall inherit at and from the coming of the Lord. Other scriptures, such as the promises to those who overcome in Rev. 2, 3 and the description of the heavenly city in Rev. 21, 22 give us instruction on the same subject; but let us now particularly look at the scene on the holy mount.

“And it came to pass about an eight days after these sayings, he took Peter and James and John, and went up into a mountain to pray. And as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering.” It was when Jesus was in the acknowledgment of dependence “as he prayed,” that this change took place. This then, is the first thing we have here—a change such as will pass upon the living saints when Jesus comes. And behold, there talked with him two men, which were Moses and Elias.” They were with Him. And this will be our joy; we shall be with Jesus. In 1 Thess. 4 after stating the order in which the resurrection of the sleeping, and the change of the living, saints will take place, and that we shall both be caught up together to meet the Lord in the air, all that the apostle says as to what shall ensue is, “and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” But in this passage there is not only the being with Christ, but there is also familiar intercourse with Him. “There talked with him two men.” It is not that He talked with them, though that was no doubt true; but that might have been, and they be at a distance. But when we read that they talked with Him, we get the idea of the most free and familiar intercourse. Peter and the others knew what it was to have such intercourse with Jesus in humiliation; and what joy must it have been to have this proof that such intercourse with Him would be enjoyed in glory! And then it is said “they appeared in glory.” But this is secondary to what we have been considering. We are told that they were with Him, and then that they appeared in glory. They share in the same glory as that in which He was manifested. And so as to us: “When Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall we also appear with him in glory.” “The glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as thou hast loved me.”

But there is another thing still. We are not only told that they were with Him, that they talked with Him, and appeared in glory with Him, but we are also privileged to know the subject of their conversation. They “spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem.” It was the cross which was the theme of their conversation in the glory—the sufferings of Christ which He had to accomplish at Jerusalem. And surely this will be our joy throughout eternity, when in glory with Christ—to dwell upon this theme, His decease accomplished at Jerusalem. We then read that Peter and they that were with him were heavy with sleep. It shows us what the flesh is in the presence of the glory of God. Peter made a great mistake too, but I pass on.

“While he thus spake, there came a cloud and overshadowed them; and they feared as they entered into the cloud. And there came a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son; hear him.” Peter tells us that this voice came from the excellent glory. “For he received from God the Father honor and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Now Peter and the others had entered into the cloud; and thus we get this wonderful fact that in the glory, from which the voice comes, saints are privileged to stand, and there, in that glory, share the delight of the Father in His beloved Son. Not only are we called to the fellowship of God's Son, Jesus Christ; we are called to have fellowship with the Father. We are admitted of God the Father to partake of His satisfaction in His beloved Son.

“And when the voice was past, Jesus was found alone.” The vision was all gone—the cloud, the voice, the glory, Moses and Elias—but Jesus was left, and they were left to go on their way with Jesus, knowing Him now in the light of those scenes of glory which they had beheld. And this is the use to us of those vivid apprehensions of spiritual things which we may sometimes realize. It is not that we can be always enjoying them and nothing else. But when for the season they have passed away, like this vision on the holy mount, they leave us alone with Jesus, to pursue the path of our pilgrimage with Him in spirit now, and with Him in the light and power of that deepened acquaintance with Him, and fellowship of the Father's joy in Him, that we have got on the mount; and thus to wait for the moment of His return, when all this, and more than our hearts can think of, shall be fulfilled to us forever.

Notes on Scripture: 6. Grace Rejected and Heavenly Glory Opened

Such are two of the main thoughts presented in this striking an instructive chapter. God was rejected, let Him speak or act as He might, and never more than when He displayed His grace. “Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost.” It is true, these Christ-rejecting Jews boasted in the law; but if they had received the law by the disposition of angels, had they kept it? They had persecuted the prophets; they had slain those who foreshowed the coming of the Just One; they had now betrayed and murdered Himself.

It was no new feature in their history. Their fathers had done the same as themselves Man is ever resisting what God sends in blessing. Joseph and Moses had been rejected, the two prominent types of the Lord Jesus. Their fathers despised and hated Joseph: they had done the same by Christ. God exalted Joseph; and Stephen's testimony was to Jesus standing on the right hand of God. And if Joseph sent and called his kindred in grace, does not and will not Christ the same?

Moses appears. He abandons the house of Pharaoh in love to his brethren, but they resisted him, as Christ was resisted. “As your fathers did, so do ye.” All boasting then was ended. They were constant only in opposing the Holy Ghost. This is ever the case with the natural man. He cannot trust God. He ever resists the Spirit of God. There is no power in him to rely on the word of God; but the moment a thing is built up that can be seen, man can trust in that, no matter what it may be. God may be gone; but if it be the tabernacle or the temple, some settled thing for the eye, man will trust in it, though it is the very thing God is about to judge.

The testimony God gave was resisted; and man was clinging to that which God is going to pull down. All that is not founded upon the word will be shaken, and this, terrible though it be to flesh and blood, is a positive promise to us. “Whose voice then shook the earth; but now he hath promised, saying, yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear, For our God is a consuming fire.”

How far can you take this as a promise? If your hearts are resting here, you cannot. This may be easily known by the test—how far are your hearts attached to Christ in heaven, unseen save to the eye of faith?

How beautifully was this brought out in the case of Stephen! He was a bright reflection of his blessed Master, resisting unto blood in his strife against sin. What is more, he brings before us a vivid picture to be followed in our every-day life. For we are called always to testify for Christ, through the power of the Spirit, though it may not be unto death.

Besides, the rejection of the testimony by Stephen was a turning point of the ways of God with Israel, with man, though the principle had already come out at the death of Christ. God never could directly bless the world after that. He could forgive guilty Israel if they repented, and send Christ back again, in answer to the prayer on the cross. And this is just what Peter preaches in Acts 3 that if the people were converted, to the blotting out of their sins, Jesus was ready to return, and to bring in the times of restitution of all things—a truth which their present impenitence postpones, but does not destroy: for He is coming again.

But now Stephen's testimony is utterly refused, and the witness of Christ's heavenly glory is cast out of the city and stoned without mercy. It was the fitting sequel of such a testimony.

God had been dealing with man in all sorts of ways since Adam, but it only brought out the greater evil, for man continually resisted Him. Before the law they were lawless; they were transgressors when they got the law. God had given priests, kings, prophets in vain. Then He sent His Son. But they only rejected God in all ways, and at all times. When Christ came, sin added another crime to the terrible list: the deepest of all evils was there—rejection of the Son of man in His humiliation, and of the Spirit's testimony to His exaltation in heavenly glory. Jesus came not in the sternness of the law, but in love, yet He met only with enmity and hatred. If men, as such, could, have been connected with God, they must have been when Christ came. But man needs a new nature for such a link; and this Christ does give to all who believe, and has sent down the Holy Ghost to maintain it in power.

So Stephen, “being full of the Holy Ghost,” looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, and said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.”

Such is the true place of the believer, rendered capable by the Spirit of fixing his eye on Jesus in glory, and this in presence of the world and its prince, who crucified the Lord of glory. It is not simply nor vaguely his eye opened to glory, but he sees the Son of man there, and the Spirit forms his heart and mind and walk according to that pattern. For the veil is rent and Jesus is seen in heaven.

We have heaven opened four times in the New Testament; and of these the first when the Lord was upon the earth. There was nothing in the actual condition of man which God could look on with pleasure till the man Christ Jesus was seen on earth. That the heavens should open on Him was no marvel. God had found perfect rest upon earth, and said, when the heavens opened, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” On the last occasion, viz., in Rev. 19, heaven is opened for the fourth time, and Christ is seen as coming to judge. In each of these heaven opened to Christ. But there was a third scene when heaven opened, and not to Christ. He had been rejected from earth, and was no longer a link between it and God. Where then is He? At God's right hand. When He was crucified, the whole world was condemned, and the prince of this world judged. All had joined together—governor, priest, people—against the Lord and His anointed. The world deliberately rejected the holiness of God, and had no heart for the love of God. Yet after this, and in spite of this, we get heaven opened once more before Christ comes to execute judgment. Heaven is opened upon a believer in Christ, upon a witness to His glory outside the world. “Behold, I see the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.” Christ Himself was the object on earth upon whom heaven opened. Christ is now the object in heaven presented to the believer on earth.

But Stephen's testimony only drew out the murderous opposition of the world. It had been guilty of rejecting Christ down here. It equally rejected Him, now that He is proclaimed as the exalted One in heaven.

But Stephen only thus saw and testified, when “full of the Holy Ghost.” To have the Holy Ghost is one thing; to be filled with the Holy Ghost is another. When He is the one source of my thought, I am filled with Him When He has possession of my heart, there is power to silence what is not of God, to keep my soul from evil, and to guide in every act of my life and walk; so that in both, I am kept apart from the world. (Compare Eph. 5:18; “be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.”) Are we then looking steadfastly into heaven? Alas! what inconstant hearts we have; how fickle and changing! The Holy Ghost ever leads the eye to, and would keep it fixed on Jesus. He is the object of the Spirit from all eternity; whether as the Son in the bosom of the Father; or the rejected Messiah on earth; or the Son of man exalted at the right hand of God. To reveal and glorify Him is the habitual aim of the Spirit.

When we have not much power for prayer, or even to follow others, and our hearts get full of distracted thoughts—when there is little energy in our souls for praise and worship; we have but a feeble measure of the power of the Spirit; we are not filled with the Holy Ghost.

The heavens, then, can be opened upon a believer here below, when Christ, the Son of man, is up there. What a thought, what a truth for our heart! Indeed, more than this; for in Eph. 2 we learn the blessed fact, that God has quickened us together with Christ; has raised us up together and seated us together in Christ in heavenly places. He has taken His place at the right hand of God: and we are made to sit there in Him, because united to Him who is there. “He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit.”

It is no longer, then, the heavens opening and Jesus acknowledged in humiliation to be the beloved Son of God. It is not the heavens open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of man, the object of service to those who were the most dignified and holy creatures of God. It is not yet heaven opened and a rider upon the white horse, issuing thence in triumphant judgment. It is a precious and intervening scene, where the disciple on earth sees the heavens opened, and, filled with the Spirit, sees the glory of God and Jesus standing at His right hand. It is the manifest and characteristic picture of the true position of the Christian, rejected like Jesus, because of Jesus, with Jesus, but withal his eyes opened by the Holy Ghost to higher hopes and glory, than any dependent on the Lord's return to and judgment of the earth, and restoration of His ancient people. Heavenly glory is the portion with which his soul is in present fellowship and with Jesus therein.

Indeed Stephen's discourse to the Jews had strikingly paved the way to this; for while he had sketched the history of the people from the very first, he had singled out Abraham, called away from his country and kindred, by the appearing of the God of glory. Abraham, a stranger in the land of promise, and not a foot of it as yet his own. He had traced the sins, sorrows, and bondage of “our fathers,” till God delivered the people out of Egypt, as He had previously called Abraham from Mesopotamia. Two individuals stood out most significantly; but they were scarcely more characterized by the honor of God, than they had been previously by the rejection of Israel—Joseph given up to the Gentiles, afterward the most exalted in the personal administration of the kingdom, and the instrument of the goodness and wisdom of God, in behalf of the very brethren who had persecuted and sold him—Moses, the refused ruler and judge, whom God sent, long after, to be a ruler and a deliverer. Just such had been the features of their recent sin, and such should be the path of God in His grace. But they had no ear for Him as yet. From the very first, their idolatrous hearts had departed from Him, however slow He had been in executing judgment. And however their pride might rest complacently in this holy place, God Himself in truth was, and had been, as great a stranger, so to speak, in Canaan, as had been Abraham His friend. It was true that “Solomon built him an house.” But this had furnished the occasion for the prophet to tell them in due time, that the Most High, whose hand had made all things, would not rest in a temple made with hands; and this, in connection with restored idolatry in the temple, and the consummated wickedness and judgment of Israel in the latter day, before the Lord shall create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy.

And now, the history of Christ had been the fresh and full verification of these varied principles of God, and all was caused to flash on their unrenewed and rebellious consciences, by the Holy Ghost, through Stephen. But heaven opened to him, as it can on us, in virtue of our being members of Christ; as we see in John 14 “ye in me and I in you.” We see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. We are made the righteousness of God in Him. He has vindicated the holiness of God, whose righteousness is now for me and justifies me. And the Holy Ghost gives me competency to look up into heaven, and see my forerunner there—my righteousness there. I am there, for Christ and the believer are united. I am one with Him It is Paul who shows us this truth fully. It was made known to him from his very conversion, “I am Jesus whom thou persecuted.” The other apostles never developed it as he did. Paul was the fitted vessel for disclosing this great truth, not yet unfolded—the secret hid in God—and thus for completing the word, as we read in Col. 1. There had been, as it were, a blank left for it.

Stephen looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the Son of man standing at God's right hand—a man in heaven seen by one on earth! What an immense step. Truly blessed to have Christ in heaven! to see Him there, and be livingly associated with Him in that glory.

But the Son of man was seen standing there. Why standing? He could not sit until the last act of rejection was completed. What a tale? What sin man has wrought and woe he has entailed on himself! But Christ is set down waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. So must we wait. The righteousness we are made—we are not waiting for that, but for the hope of righteousness by faith. We are set down in Christ, in spirit and purpose, at God's right hand, until the heaven open for the last time, and the Son of man comes to judge all that can be shaken. Does this alarm me? No. I am safe to the end. I have a city which hath foundations. I am linked in with what God has settled, and cannot be moved.

What an effect this sight in heaven should have upon our souls. In Stephen it produced a thorough practical likeness to Christ. If you look at Christ, He witnessed a good confession before Pontius Pilate, Caiaphas, the people, &c. What is Stephen? A faithful follower of the One he sees in heaven. He bears witness to His Master, forgetful of himself or his danger, without a thought of consequences. The Holy Ghost guides and fills him with holy joy that ran over. His heart was filled with Christ to the exclusion of care for his life, or what should follow. Christ was the only object before him. He was like Christ in confession, like Him in suffering too, “filling up that which was behind.” What a picture of practical conformity to Christ in grace—perfect confidence in looking up to the Lord, into whose hands he committed his spirit strong intercession, as he thought of those who stoned him to death! “And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.”

The ungrieved spirit displayed in Stephen the reflection of the character and ways and words of Christ; but this brought on trial, and it ever will be so. The cross we shall have; and what of that? It is a good thing for us; it draws us away from the world; it breaks the will; it delivers from self, by cutting, it may be, the next link to the heart. The cross has a delicious power, though not a pleasant thing: it would be no cross if it were. But it lifts up the believer, and makes him see what a portion he has in Christ; who waits to take those He has redeemed to Himself, “that where He is, there they may be also.”

Notes on Scripture: 7. Galatians 6

Nothing is so difficult as to take a man out of himself; it is impossible, except by giving him a new nature. Man glories in anything that will bring honor to himself—anything that distinguishes him from his neighbor. It does not signify what it is, (it may be even that he is the tallest man,) anything his pride may take up as that which gives him advantage over others.

Some may glory in their talents. There are differences in men's minds: vanity is seen more in some, wishing for the good opinion of others; pride more in others, having a good opinion of themselves. Wealth, knowledge, anything that distinguishes a man, he will glory in, and make a little world around himself by it.

There is another thing, too, that men glory in, besides talent, birth, wealth, &c., and that is their religion. Take a Jew, and you will find he glories in not being a Turk, the Christian, so called, glories in that he is not a heathen and a publican. Man will thus take the very thing that God has given to take him out of himself to accredit himself with. Those who are so deluded as to be throwing themselves down to Juggernaut may have less to glory in, or to fancy they can glory in; but the measure of truth, connected with the religion men hold, is the very occasion of their glorying. Thus the Turk who owns the true God, will glory in his religion over those who do not; the Jew, in his religion—he has the truth, and “salvation came of the Jews;” the Gentile Christian too has truth, but then he prides himself upon it, and that brings in the mischief. The subtlety of the enemy is seen in proportion as it is truth in which he makes a man glory; and it is not so difficult to detect, either, for if you are proud of being a Christian, the whole thing is told at once. (It is another thing of course, for the true, genuine child of God walking in the power of the cross, &c., who glories in that he knows God.)

With Jonah there was just this pride at work: he was proud of being a Jew, and would not go to Nineveh, as God told him, because he was afraid of losing his reputation. He had rather have seen all Nineveh destroyed, than have his own credit as a prophet lost. Jonah was a true prophet, but glorying in himself, turning his religion into a ground of self-glorying.

Whatever you are decking yourself out with, it may even be with a knowledge of scripture, it is glorying in the flesh. Ever so little a thing is enough to make us pleased with ourselves; what we should not notice in another is quite enough to raise our own importance.

Glorying in religion is a deeper thing. Whatever comes from man must be worthless. A man cannot glory in being a sinner. Conscience can never glory, and there is no true religion without the conscience—not speaking now of God's righteousness. What is it then wherein man glories in religion! It always must have a legal character, because there must be something for him to do—hard penance, or anything, no matter at what cost, if it only glorifies self. “As many as desire to make a fair show in the flesh, constrain you to be circumcised they desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh.” Man could bind heavy burdens. Why should her? Because self would have to do something. When man glories in self there may be the truth in a measure, but it is of a legal character always, because there must be something man can do for God. Glorying in the flesh is not glorying in sin, but, as in Phil. 3 religious glorying, glorying in something besides Christ.

Verse 14. In the cross man has nothing to say to it. It is not my cross, but “the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and the only part I had in Christ's cross was sin. My sin had to do with it, for it brought Him there. This puts man down altogether. That which saves man, and what God delights in, man could not put a finger to in bearing. “The folly of God is wiser than men.” The one single thing I have in the cross is my sin. There is this further thing, we are utterly lost without it. Divine love treats me as an utterly lost sinner, and the more I see that perfect, divine love, the more I see how vile I am, utterly contemptible, defiled and lost. I have liked defiling myself; I am a wretched slave, dragged down to my defilement. The cross, when I see what it is, destroys my glorying in self, and puts truth in the inward parts, too, for it not only shows me how bad I am, but it makes me glad to confess my sin, instead of making excuses for it. I am awakened to say, ‘I am guilty of having loved all this.' Love opens the heart, and enables me to come and tell Him how bad I am. I thus delight to record all that He has done, all that I owe Him; and that is thankfulness. My heart tells out its vileness; there is no guile—not delighting in the sin of course, but rejoicing in the remedy. Then we have, farther, God's delight in the cross. “Having made peace through the blood of the cross,” God gives us to delight with Him in the value of it. And first, we see in it God's unutterable love—not love called out, like ours, by a loveable object. No; God commendeth His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” It was love acting in its own proper energy—from itself only—so properly divine that a soul expecting it, as a matter of course, could not be a fit object for it. God's work and God's way are shown in a manner that man could not and ought not to have thought of. I am a poor miserable sinner, and there I see God's love in giving His own Son. When He forgives, there is the positive, active energy of love in giving the best thing—the thing nearest to itself—for sin, which is the thing farthest from itself, giving it to be “made sin.” When I look at the cross, I see perfect and infinite love, God giving His Son to be “made sin.” I see perfect and infinite wisdom also.

With a conscience, I cannot enjoy God's love without seeing Him dealing about my sin. A sparrow even God can be good to, it is true; but can God accept me in my sins? Can He accept an imperfect offering? As Micah says, Can I give the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? Cain brought the fruit of his own work, without any sense of sin: the hardness of his heart was proved by it, and an utter forgetfulness about his sin. I see in the cross what my sin is. I cannot look at that as God sees it without learning God. Man has forgotten God enough to rise up against Him who was God's remedy for his misery. Then judgment must be exercised; God's authority must be vindicated. “It became him to make the captain of salvation perfect through suffering.”

Are angels to see man flying in God's face, and He take no notice of it? No! therefore, “it became him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things,” &c. God is a righteous judge, and judgment must be executed. There is judgment as well as love seen in the cross. There is not only a holy nature taking sin, but Christ is undergoing the judgment due to evil. There is the unsparing wrath of God against the sin, but God's perfect love to the sinner. There His majesty, which we insulted, is vindicated—even the Son bows to that. If He is to keep up the brightness of the Father's glory, He must vindicate His character in this way. God's truth was proved at the cross. “The wages of sin is death.” Man had forgotten this, but Christ stands up, the witness of God in such a world, that what God has said is true. “The wages of sin is death.” The love with which God wins man to Him proves this very thing at the same time.

There is more in the cross. God accomplishes all His purposes by it. He is bringing “many sons to glory,” and how could He bring these defiled sinners into the same glory with His own Son? Why, God has so fully accomplished the work that when in the glory with Him, we shall be a part of the display of that glory. Therefore He says, “That in the ages to come, he might show the exceeding riches of his grace,” —a Mary Magdalene, a thief upon the cross, trophies of that grace, through all eternity! And how could He set them in such a place with His own Son His own glory and love ride over all our sin and put it all away: He Himself has done it.

For us, then, the cross has done two things it has given peace of conscience, and not what man can see outside, and then spoil. No, He has perfected forever them that are sanctified. All sin is blotted out and put away. I can glory in the cross, then, for my sins are gone! Again, “After that ye have known God,” or rather are known of God—poor wretched things that we are, to be made the vessels of such love and grace! The conscience has certainty and peace, and more than that, a confidence that Adam in innocence could never have had. There is communion and peace in my own soul, and there is another thing also—I have clearness of understanding in the ways of God. Should I go through a course pf ceremonies, genuflections, &c., to add to my perfectness which I have through the cross? You do not know the cross; you do not know what Christ—what God—has done by the cross, if you are trying other things to make you better. “Can the Ethiopian change his skin?” When you know the cross, you cannot use all these efforts to satisfy and quiet your conscience. When you know it, it leaves spiritual affections free. When I see the cross, I can love God. If I have offended Him, I can go off to Him directly and tell Him—I am a child, and my relationship is not thereby altered: my fellowship is with the Father and the Son—that is my happy privilege.

When I can glory in the cross, there is an end of glorying in self; for I am nothing but a sinner. He has brought us in by the cross, for Christ has suffered, the just for the unjust. Are our souls glorying in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, or in vanity, or in self? If you are not glorying in the cross, it is your own loss, not to say your own sin; for you can never see God's love, God's holiness, God's wisdom, God's truth, as on the cross. It is where you are you may learn it, for you have not to climb up somewhere to get it; but it has come to you where you are. It is not when you are better you may come. You cannot come when you are better, though it will make you better. It is as a sinner you must come. The apostle came as “the chief of sinners.” Then “the world,” as he says, “is crucified to me, and I to the world.” The very nature which is connected with the world is what occasioned Christ's death, therefore, when I glory in the cross, I am crucified to the world.

Notes on Scripture: 8. 1 John 4

If we look at man, we shall find his whole history in the history of Adam. What Adam was in the garden, man has been ever since, from the garden to the cross. God tried man, but man only marred all he was trusted with.

When God chose a nation, it was no better. The people were idolaters, the kings rebellious, the priests soiled their garments, so that they could not stand before God. Whatever God has given in grace, creation, providence, or law, man has abandoned. When the Lord from heaven came, the iniquitous nation rejected Him. But He never fails, and God will prove His love and wisdom by meeting His own people in every single thing, in which man has broken down. All will come out in glory, as the positive fruit of the cross. We learn a great deal more of what God is by knowing man; and we learn a great deal more of what man is by knowing God. If we look at the Church, man is just the same—the mystery of iniquity working, the spirit of demons amongst them, the love of many waxing cold, until there is not a righteous one left, but all closes in perfect ruin.

God gives a power apart from man. He gives a new life; and life in His Son. In virtue of Him, it cannot fail. It is eternal life—life in Christ. God was perfectly manifested in the Son, when He came down from heaven to give life. But this is not enough. What about my sins? Where are my sins? To have life without the question of sin being settled will not do. Christ had them on the cross. Christ came down from heaven to put my sin away, and He did put it away and can say, “at that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” Christ's life is in me—eternal life; and this life is in the Son. I have His life, not His Godhead, of course. As surely as I have partaken of the life and nature of the first Adam, so have I life in the second Adam. If any man be in Christ there is a new creation. The divine nature is there. It is in a poor earthen vessel, it is true, but the nature is divine, and I should be showing it out in my life and character. The more I know of God, the more shall I exhibit what He is. The more I look at Him, the more I shall be like Him What made Moses' face to shine? Was it looking at himself? No. It was being with Jehovah and looking at His glory. Moses did not know that his face was shining until he was asked to veil it. He was not occupied with himself: the object before him was God. He had been looking at God, he was absorbed in God, and so shows out God's glory. It will be the same with us. If Christ is the object before me, I shall not be thinking of myself, but of Him. I shall be exhibiting Him, dwelling upon what He is, and not upon what I am doing. If my eye is upon Christ, I shall resemble Him (feebly indeed) in holiness, and humbleness, and love. I find it in Him in all its blessedness and beauty; I see it in all its perfectness, and in looking at Him, I am changed into His image. In Him there is all the new nature can crave or desire. In Him I can rest, and delight, and rejoice. What joy to know the Son of God is come! Satan works, it is true, but “ye are of God” (this settles the whole thing); no longer of the old nature, living and acting according to the life of the first Adam; but in the power of the new nature, that we derive from God.

What a thing to be partakers of the divine nature, made higher than angels! This is a most blessed truth, “Ye are of God,” of Him, whose nature is divine. And this divine nature cannot be met but by Himself. Christ has washed us from our sins in; His own most precious blood. He has baptized us from above with the Holy Ghost and sealed us with the Spirit of promise, “He who hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God.” He has given us a power which is above Satan's power. “Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.” “Ye are of God.” I am brought to God. I am born of God. I rest in God. I learn to know God, because I have got the nature, that can know Him, just as I could only know what man is by having his nature.

I do not know all about God, that is true, but I have no uncertainty. Suppose I have a friend, I may not know all about him, but he is my friend, and I rejoice in him as such, I have no questionings as to his affections, because I do not know all about him. Well, God is my friend, and I have a blessed rest in knowing Him as my friend. If God is my friend, what more can I need? What can be more blessed?

To know God, I must have His nature. I cannot know the nature of what I am not a partaker. I do not know angels; I am not a partaker of the nature of angels.

We see two things in this chapter which give the soul immense delight. Verse 9 shows us the way God makes His love known. In verse 17 we see how His love is made perfect. In verse 9 God sends His only begotten Son into the world, that I may have life through Him. That we may have life who were dead, that we may be partakers of a life that flows from the manifestation of God's love—a life separated altogether from nature and nature's affections and pleasures. It cannot be hinged in with selfishness. And what is my nature: is it not mere selfishness? If I look at my motives from day to day, what shall I find them? are they not self? Take business, (we are not speaking of the rightness of the thing), what is the motive? Is it not self? We have no idea how we are under the influence of self. Is it not true that the trifles of dress more occupy the thoughts of many than all God has done in sending down His Son from heaven to save sinners? It is a positive fact, and it is no use to try to hide it from ourselves. We cannot hide it from God. On the other hand, the more I look at this love, the more I see of its perfectness. It is said “for a good man some will even dare to die.” But when there was not a single good thing in us, God commended His love to us. It was purely grace.

We were just sinners, and nothing but sinners, when Christ died to save us. And I can never understand what God's love really is, until I can say I am merely a sinner If you do not know what God's love is, it is because you have not learned that great truth— “You are a sinner.” What is it that God has given to save sinners? The very nearest thing to His heart—the most precious boon He had to bestow—His own beloved and only begotten Son. There is no accounting for His love. There is no estimating it. The thing most of all dear to Him was the Son of His bosom; and Him He gave. There is no limit to His love. He has given me Christ, and there is no end to what I have in Him The Son of God was given for my sins. He goes down into these depths and brings up life. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be a propitiation for our sins.” How can I know that God loves me? By looking at the perfect object of His love, and this gives me rest. Why? Because in Him I see how wondrous is the love that sent down His Son to give me eternal life, and be a propitiation for my sins. If I have not rest, what I want is a deeper sense of sin. I must learn what sin is at the cross, and then I shall see the love that has met it, and suffered for it, and thus my soul gets rest. Christ's love was not the theory of one who comes and merely tells what God is, but the practical exhibition of Him. He shows out God in all the variety of His unreserved and immeasurable love. Compare verse 12 with verse 8 of John 1, “No man,” &c.

Nobody hath seen—He who hath been in the bosom of the Father must declare Him. The SON must tell what can be known of the Father. On Christ HANGS everything. All hindrances are gone for the believer through Him; all sin is put away by Him. I here get a place of intimate nearness to God in Him. I have learned at the cross what God was to me as a sinner; and now I have to learn how He meets my wants as a saint, by feeling my need and bringing it to Him. To be hungry is not enough; I must be really starving to know what is in His heart towards me. So in the gospel, when the prodigal was hungry, he went to feed upon husks; but when he was starving, he turned to his father's house, and then learned the love of the father's heart.

Observe in verse 15 how low God comes, “Whosoever will confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.” How He steps down to meet us, so that every one shall be left without excuse. “Whosoever shall confess, &c.” The babe who can but just confess Christ has eternal life, as truly as the strong man in Christ. It is not a question of what I am, but of what Christ is. I am lost sight of. All hangs on what God is. How can I know this love? Must I wait for its full display? No, He has shed abroad His love in my heart by the Spirit He has given me. Verse 16, “He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” If I am dwelling in God, I am dwelling in love, and should be showing out love by looking at Him and not at others. Verse 17: this is a wonderful thing to say, “as he is, so are we in this world.” He has taken His seat at God's right-hand, and brings me there.

We are now before God in the righteousness of Christ. He is my life, and I cannot be really, nor ought to appear, in anything separated from Him “Herein is love with us, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment.” Does the heart get exercised about judgment? Does the thought of standing before it distress you? Why should it be so? Is not MY RIGHTEOUSNESS my judge? Has He not perfectly put away my sin and purged my conscience from all guilt, so that I can rest in God without fear; having NO longer any painful uncertainty, but calmly looking forward in the full assurance that Christ has been judged in my stead, and brought me into blessed fellowship with that love, which gives me boldness in “the day of judgment?” “As he is, so are we in this world.”

“There is No fear in love.” If there is the smallest doubt or distrust in the heart towards God, you are not made perfect in love; for perfect love casteth out fear. There are things to fear, it is true; we may well fear sin, and the influence of our own selfish interests. But the practical effect of resting on God is to cast out all fear, and make the heart perfect in love. His love is perfect. We have but to own it, bow to it, accept it as ours in Christ, and bless Him for it. This is to be made perfect in love.

“We love Him because He first loved us.”

Notes on Scripture: 9. Philippians 4

It is a very difficult thing to say, “This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth to those things which are before, I press toward the mark,” &c. (Phil. 3). The apostle had such a sight of what was at the end, he was so set agoing by it, that he was able to press forward towards the mark.

This epistle is not marked by great doctrines, but by speaking of the Christian course. Such a character of the epistle explains why the apostle speaks of “working out your own salvation with fear and trembling;” not because God has done everything for you, but “for it is God which worketh in you, both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” Just as when Israel were redeemed, they could speak of salvation as the end of their race, and not as the acceptance of their persons.

The enemy seemed to have got a great advantage by putting Paul into prison, but not at all so. “I know that this shall turn to my salvation.” It was not at all a vain thing his speaking of his desire to depart and to be with Christ. “Yet what I shall choose, I wot not.” He had to choose between Christ and service here, and Christ and rest there.

He says nothing about circumstances, nothing about the Emperor Nero; he leaves them quite out of the account. “But I know that I shall abide and remain for your furtherance and joy of faith.” What we learn from scripture of the apostle's circumstances when he wrote this epistle greatly helps us to understand the spirit in which he wrote. Many epistles give us more doctrine, as Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians; but none so gives us the likeness of the practical experience of the apostle in his Christian course.

Christ in resurrection was at the end of the vista before him, and the light of it was shining all down the path. The very thing he desired was to be a partaker of Christ's sufferings. He was looking for constant approximation to resurrection, for it was in resurrection he was to be conformed to Christ. He was taken hold of by grace for it, but now he desires himself to lay hold of it. He could count all things but loss and dung “for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus;” and people do not like to be occupied with filth. If we are gathering up refuse, we have not such a sight of the glory of the Lord as Paul had. At the first glow of conversion there is no difficulty in this; it is a very easy thing to count all things but loss then. Paul does not say, “I have made all this sacrifice: see what I have done.” He does not say, “I did count them but dung,” but “I do count them,” &c. That which keeps his energy alive and fresh is that he does not run uncertainly. The first thing to understand is, not that we are in the course to resurrection, but that resurrection has put us in a certain place, This gives us energy in pressing forwards to the mark. because we have one object before us. We find it so even in the natural man; he becomes clear-sighted when he has only one object instead of many. But in the things of God it is much more so, because there it is divine sight and divine energy.

“Rejoice in the Lord always.” Certainly it could not be in circumstances, for he was a prisoner. Christians are often a great deal happier in the trial, than they are in thinking of it; for there the stability, the certainty, the nearness, and the power of Christ are much more learned; and they are happier. Paul could not so well have said, “Rejoice in the Lord always,” if he had not known what it was to be a prisoner. Just as in Psa. 34, “I will bless the Lord at all times, His praise shall continually be in my mouth.” Why? “This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and delivered him out of all his troubles.” “I sought the Lord, and he heard me,” &c. This was what enabled him to say, “I will bless the Lord at all times.” He had been in trouble, and had been heard when in trouble. It must have been an exceeding trial for one of Paul's active disposition for service, to be kept a prisoner; and this is the time when he can say to the persons who were in the commonplace circumstances which were dragging down their hearts day by day, “Rejoice in the Lord always!” Grace is sufficient for favorable circumstances, but they are by far the most trying (spiritually) to the believer. There is an easy way of going on in worldliness, and there is nothing more sad than the quiet comfortable Christian going on day by day, apart from dependence on the Lord. It must be as Israel and the manna; there must be the daily gathering and daily dependence upon God. If circumstances come between our hearts and God, we are powerless. If Christ is nearer, circumstances will not hinder our joy in God.

“The Lord is at hand!” Just as when you look at a light on a perfectly dark night; though it may be two miles off, it appears quite close. So, the more we prove the darkness of the world, whilst enjoying the love of Christ, the nearer the hope will appear.

“Be careful for nothing,” when he had everything to make him careful; when he knew what it was to be in prison and to hunger in the prison. Why can he say this? Because he had found Christ there. What has a man to be careful for, if Christ is caring for him?

“And the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” Not you shall keep the peace of God, but “the peace of God shall keep your hearts and minds,” &c. It is the peace in which God dwells; and what peace must that be? Can any circumstances shake God's throne? God is not troubled about circumstances. Lay the whole burden upon Him, “and the peace of God shall keep your hearts and minds,” and you shall have it flowing into your hearts as a river, “passing all understanding” The word is, “Be careful for nothing, not even about the Church, though God forbid that we should not care for it.

“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things.” First, cast all the troubles and cares upon God, and then our minds will be at leisure to turn and think upon whatsoever things are lovely, &c. alone—all these blessed things, which, notwithstanding Satan, grew as fruit. If the soul is occupied with the evil, there will be weakness; but if we occupy ourselves with the good, the soul will be strengthened.

Now we have the “God of peace.” You walk in the power in which you have seen me walk. “Those things which ye have seen and heard in me, do; and the God of peace shall be with you,” not only the peace of God, but the God of peace. You will have God's power with you. Paul had walked in that path and had found the God of peace with him all the way through.

“I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at the last your care of me hath flourished again.” How glad the Apostle is to see fruit! Besides rejoicing in the Lord always, he rejoices in the Lord about them: what made him happy was that he saw Christ blessing the saints. There is no such joy on earth (save communion) as seeing the saints walking in the truth.

Ver. 11 -.13. We are apt to take the last of these verses as a general truth, and it is so; but he does not use it in this way here. What we have here is the practical experimental acquaintance of Paul with this thing. He had been in peril, in want, and in plenty (a far more dangerous thing); he had found a present Christ sufficient for him in all circumstances. “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” He cannot be our strength in circumstances which are contrary to His will. He will have an exercised soul, not seeing its path straight before it if we are walking in a path contrary to His will. There cannot be that happy liberty where the path of dependence upon God has been left. When Christians first leave the path of dependence on the Holy Ghost, they find difficulties and uneasiness; but gradually they are apt to get used to it, and then there is less conscience and less uneasiness. Where a person has left the path of spiritual power, everything takes the form of duties. The first working of the Spirit of God is to make him uneasy; then there is nothing to do but to go back the way he came. There are perplexities which arise from leaving the simple straightforward path; then the Lord comes in and restores the soul for His name's sake. The Lord does give His people rest on their way; as He did to Israel when the ark went before them to find out a place where they might rest. Circumstances need never hinder the power of spiritual joy. If I am in prosperity or in adversity, nothing can separate me from His love. It is not said “through Christ which strengthened,” but “which strengtheneth me” —a present thing.

Ver. 14-18. Still He lifts them up out of the mere temporal circumstances, and leads them into the consciousness of the connection of the saints with God — “a sacrifice acceptable, well pleasing to God.”

“My God shall supply all your need, according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus” —the God to whom I belong, and who, in a certain sense, belongs to me—the God whose faithfulness I know—who fed me when hungry, and strengthened me when weak. Exceeding sweet is it to see that what Paul had passed through had brought him so near to God. He has found in all things, in prison, in want, &c., the infallible certainty of being associated with God.

Obedience and Sprinkling of the Blood of Jesus Christ

VI. 1 Peter 1:2, 3. Do the words, “of Jesus Christ,” apply to one term or both? and what the Jewish allusions?

The words apply to both, doubtless. The whole passage characterizes the position of the Christian with reference to that of the Jew, in virtue of being begotten again to a living hope. (Compare chap. 2:4, 5, and Matt. 16:16.) Our inheritance is incorruptible, is in heaven. The election of the saints is according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, made effectual, not by such earthly deliverance as Jehovah had wrought, but by sanctification of the Spirit: all natural references, by contrast, to Israel's portion, especially as Peter writes to the sojourners of the dispersion. So again, the double character of Christian standing before God. It is Christ, not the sealing of a legal covenant, not the blood of bulls and goats. We are set apart, by the quickening power of the Holy Ghost, to the sprinkling of Christ's blood, and the obedience in which He walked on earth—practical obedience. The obedience of Christ differed from the law in every way. Law promises life when we have kept required and imposed commandments; Christ's obedience was the expression of life in love. Self-will—lust—exists in us: law forbids its gratification. If I submit, I am counted obedient. Christ never obeyed thus; He came to do God's will. Obedience was never for Him a bridle but on a contrary will. We need, alas! such a bridle still; but proper Christian obedience is the delight of our new nature in doing the will of God, whose commandments and word are the perfect expression of it for us. It is what James calls “the perfect law of liberty.” Christ's motive for action was the will and word of His Father; so it is ours as Christians. “Begotten again,” for the spiritual Jew conveyed the idea of a new state, such as Ezek. 36 presents, and referred to in John 3. The whole truth being now made clear, we know that this takes place by the communication of a new nature in Christ. He becomes our life, being a quickening spirit. Hence it involves a new position, even His own, as the object of faith now.

Matt. 19:28. Mr. C. inquires as to the heavenly place and portion of twelve, seeing that they are here promised the highest seats of dignity and rule in relation to the tribes of Israel, “in the regeneration,” or the times of restitution, the true year of Jubilee here below. The other side of the glory, which is theirs, is seen in Rev. 21, where the names of the apostles are not merely written on the gates, but in the twelve foundations of the heavenly city. They will have their place in the glorified Church on high, as ordered in the eternal counsels of God; but this will not clash with their special connection with Israel on earth. God has made known to us the mystery of His will, that for the administration of the fullness of times He is to head up all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in Him, in whom also we have obtained an inheritance.

The One Predicted Re-Awakening

“Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened onto ten virgins which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom; &c.

Such is the one predicted re-awakening, and such are the foretold results. The cry (“Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him”) shall effect it; and the result shall be the going in of all the wise unto the marriage supper, and the closing of the door of entrance thereunto.

The slumbering church, so called, shall itself be roused from the long slumber of its apostasy, as a whole, only by the cry announcing the bridegroom's immediate approach. There was time but for the trimming of the lamps. There was no oil obtained by the foolish, who had taken none with them at the first. They were all excluded from the marriage supper. The bridegroom “knew them not,” and could not admit them into his joyous presence.

Whence, then, the notion of the world's previous conversion? The church itself sleeps until the bridegroom is coming. When once the tarrying of the bridegroom has furnished the “occasion to the flesh” for worldly sloth and self-indulgence, the church, so called, awakes no more until the cry, “The bridegroom cometh,” effectually arouses it. Where can there be found the remotest possibility of any intervening thousand years of universal holiness and peace? Do we need further witnesses?

But let us contemplate this great awakening. Did not our hearts burn within us, when we heard, in days gone by, of great revivals, and effusions of the Holy Ghost? Do they not now burn within us, when true tidings of such sort salute our ears? Here is represented to us, then, a grand and veritable revival, or re-awakening—the grand one of the age—the final and decisive one of the dispensation. How is this wonderful prediction overlooked! How is this plain account of the consummation and conclusion of Christendom's apostasy passed over and neglected!

“THEN shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins.” What may these words, “Kingdom of heaven,” be intended to denote? and WHEN shall this kingdom be likened to ten virgins?

The term “Christendom” seems a contraction of the words, “Christ's kingdom” —the precise equivalent to the expression made use of in the parable. The nominally Christian portion of the population of the earth seems clearly that which the parable describes. The world's population, as a whole, enters not into the question here. Those only who “had taken the lamp” are spoken of. None but “virgins” —professed attendants on the Lord's return—are included. The condition and destiny of the earth's inhabitants form the subject of a hundred other scriptures. This scripture treats only of “the kingdom of heaven"; and that not of the kingdom formally established, but merely of its state whilst its sovereign is in banishment there from—rejected out of the earth. There are those who own their rejected and absent sovereign—some in reality, others in profession only. These constitute his kingdom now. But the kingdom formally set up—the kingdom of the thousand years—when, leaving the Father's throne, the Son of man shall ascend leis own peculiar one, and glorify his saints together with himself, subduing to himself the nations of the universal earth, this kingdom is a distinct, and certainly a yet future one. This kingdom—the one only entirely real one—must assuredly come after the mixed and slumbering condition of affairs set forth in the parable before us. Before the state that the parable describes, it did not come. During the period therein depicted, it cannot come. In an age beyond the period of this parable, therefore, it will surely yet transpire.

The Christianized portions of the earth, during the present era, are the subject also of the parables of the thirteenth chapter of this gospel. It is not all the population of the earth, which is treated of therein. The whole world's population cannot be included. No millennium will ever arrive in such case. A mixed population is finally disposed of in these parables. The wheat is gathered home to the garner, and the tares are burned in the fire. The net cast into the sea is drawn ashore, only to be found filled with fish, both bad and good. The good only are gathered into vessels. The bad are cast away— “into a furnace of fire, where shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” Not one word here of all the remainder of the fish, which the world's sea contains. Other scriptures treat of those.

These parables, we repeat it, speak of the “kingdom of heaven” —of Christendom only, or the (at the least nominally) Christianized portions of the earth's population. “The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed,” &c. “The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed,” &c. “The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven,” &c. “The kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field,” &c. “The kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchantman,” &c. “The kingdom of heaven is like unto a net,” &c. The first of these seven parables of Matt. 13—that of the Sower—also describes the same sphere. The chapter is a course of instruction, of seven-fold perfectness, not regarding the whole world, but such portion thereof only as shall be sown with wheat and tares previously to the end of the present age.

Such is the sphere which is treated of in the parable specially before us. “The kingdom of heaven shall be likened unto ten virgins.” It is the virgin, or lamp bearing portion of the people of the earth, whose course is here described. Were it otherwise, and were the whole world included, there could be no millennium of universal knowledge of the Lord. For the foolish virgins doubtless are those who elsewhere as tares, or bad fish, or wicked and slothful servants, are cast into the fire. If then these are so removed from the earth, and the wise virgins, like the wheat, or good fish, or good and faithful servants, are taken up into the presence of their Lord in glory; and if these parties constitute the whole population of the globe, where shall there be found any nucleus or basis for a millennial race? Clearly, in such case, there could be no such element found.

But when shall the great event of this parable transpire “Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps,” &c. The division into two chapters of the grand prophetic discourse which comprises this parable is unfortunate. Very much that is connected with a right apprehension of the parable depends upon an enlightened perception of the teaching of the discourse as a whole.

The period alluded to, in the use of the word, “Then” — “Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins” —seems that which is immediately connected with the unequaled time of tribulation, rather than with the time of the execution of the foregoing judgment. The earlier portions of the discourse, and specially when the narration of Luke is collated with this of Matthew, seem sufficient to place this beyond dispute.

There should come a day when the nation of Israel, brought to a state of preparation for the reception of their true Messiah, should in sincerity exclaim, “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” But until that day they should be favored with no further presentation of himself. “Your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth.” He then “went out, and departed from the temple.” He went therein no more. After two days was the passover, and he was betrayed to be crucified, chapter 26:1, 2. But to the disciples, as he at upon the Mount of Olives, whither he had gone from the temple, he had proceeded to deliver this, his grand prophetic utterance.

There should transpire a period of wars, delusions, disasters, and apostasy. This period should close with a crisis of yet far deeper sorrows. Only an elect remnant of disciples, whom it should not be possible to deceive, and for whose sake those days should be shortened, would be saved. Otherwise no flesh should have been saved; in which case no millennium could have taken place. But those days should be shortened, and a chosen remnant spared. God's purpose should be certainly secured.

Then shall the true Messiah once more present himself to his own nation. Immediately after this unequaled tribulation he shall return in glory. “Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other,” Matt. 24:29-31. This is the period when the judgment of the quick is executed. This is the time referred to, proximately, at the least, in the word with which the parable commences. “THEN shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins.” But the precise order of events we seek not to determine now.

I. These “virgins” had previously gone forth. They had taken their lamps. They had assumed the position of expectants and attendants, They had given assent unto the truth that there should be a wedding—that a bridegroom would appear. They had faith; all of them possessed belief, such as it was. This they openly professed, by going forth all of them. Yet with very many this was but the excess of folly. “The foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them: but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.”

The oil denotes the Holy Ghost. “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost, and with power.” “Ye have an unction from the Holy One.” Anointing ever signified the communication of divine power, whether for official or for private relationships or purposes—the power of the Holy Ghost. In this case, as in others, the oil was needed specially as the power and source of joy—well-founded joy. “The oil of joy for mourning” “God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.” The virgins needed the joy of hope whilst waiting, and the power of joyful recognition and reception of the bridegroom, when he actually appeared.

Thus the flame would seem to denote this joy—this suited tribute of homage to the bridegroom. “Go forth with joy to meet him” is the well-known stanza of a well-known composition. To this day illuminations are the notorious commemoratives of joyous events. And the thought is scriptural. “Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart.” “The light of the righteous rejoiceth, but the lamp of the wicked shall be put out.” So it was alas with that of the foolish virgins. Their hope began to vanish just at the period when it should have ripened into realization. It was ill-founded: there was no oil in the vessel—no Holy Ghost—no power of divine grace in the heart. Whilst the bridegroom tarried, and all things continued as they had been—whilst the sun shone, and the stars yet gave forth light, and the moon walked in her brightness, their hearts were the deluded subjects of a certain vain and shadowy hope, that somehow, at the last, all would prove well with them. But the fear of the righteous revelation of the Judge of quick and dead—the over-hanging hastening storm close behind the wedding supper—at once produced the piteous exclamation, “Our lamps are going out!” Their false hope died away. Their hearts became darkened by despair. They cried out, “Give us of your oil; for our lamps are going out.” (See margin.)

But let us now view the general instruction of this parable. There was a time when all those virgins “slumbered and slept"; this was “whilst the bridegroom tarried.” The church fell into this slumber at a very early period of its history. Three centuries had not rolled away before the disastrous change had set in almost universally. The servants had begun to say, “My Lord delayeth His coming,” and they had commenced to “beat the men-servants and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken.” Cyprian (so early as A.D. 250), declared of the church generally, “All were set upon an immeasurable increase of gain, and forgetting how the first converts to our holy religion had behaved under the personal direction and care of the Lord's apostles, or how all ought in after times to carry themselves, the love of money was their darling passion.” Eusebius, who assuredly was no cynic or austere criticizer of the prevailing character of his day, did yet on one occasion pen the following passage— “We were almost upon the point of taking up arms against each other; prelates inveighing against prelates, and people rising against people; and hypocrisy and dissimulation had risen to the greatest height and malignity.” This was about A.D. 310. Cyril (the so-called bishop of Jerusalem, only about fifty years later) wrote as follows— “Formerly the heretics were manifest, but now the church is filled with heretics in disguise. For men have fallen away from the truth, and have itching ears. Is it a plausible theory? All listen to it gladly. Is it a word of correction? All turn away from it. Most have departed from right words, and rather choose the evil than desire the good. This therefore is the falling away; and the enemy (Antichrist) is soon to be looked for.” But why should we refer to the Fathers? The sacred canon was not closed too soon to record, for our instruction, the commencement of the predicted slumbering and sleeping. Read 2 Thess. 2:7; 2 Tim. 3; specially the addresses to the churches, in the concluding book of the inspired volume. Yes, the apostasy and the slumber set in exceeding early! The papacy is indeed an old religion. The spirit of godly protestantism was evoked before the apostles died. The seeds of most of Rome's fundamental errors were sown and germinating eighteen hundred years ago. Why should this be controverted? Alas! how can it be denied?

Christendom, so called, is still “slumbering and sleeping.” Some of the nations thereof have changed their creed, indeed, and their communion and name. The real work of God in the period of the Reformation resulted in this—many, very many—a noble army of martyrs and of confessors, with a yet greater multitude of believers, “little and unknown,” were savingly converted. The alteration of several national professions followed. But the mass of each and every single population remained fast asleep. Returning torpor ere long befell most even of those who had been savingly awakened. Christendom still slumbers. The millions eat and drink, and are drunken with the cares of this life. “Where is the promise of his coming?” is the grand echo of all their doings. Alas, who shall arouse them! When shall they awake? What shall break in effectually upon this slumber of eighteen, or nearly eighteen, centuries? The church, it is affirmed, must convert the world; but, alas, who shall arouse, if not convert, the church? Who shall awaken it?

“And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him. THEN all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps.” This solemn outcry, then, is that which effects the great awakening. The cry, “Behold, the bridegroom cometh!” —that only—will arouse the slumbering church. Clearly, then, the labors of those who seek to persuade the church that the millennium must first ensue will not accomplish this. Those who boast of the world's conversion by the institutions now existing will never succeed even in awakening the church. Will they bear plain dealing? They stand directly in the way of this desirable event. They impede it—nay, virtually labor to prevent it. They lend their energies to thwart it. They use their influence on the other side. They say, “The bridegroom cometh not till there transpire an intervening thousand years.” A faint rumor has sped its way recently across our land, to the same purport as the formal midnight cry, and some of the sleepers have been already startled. Our friends who are of the notion that the grand institutions in existence must do this work sound forth immediately a counteracting cry: Hush! hush! he comes not yet! Shall these persons bring about the predicted universal “trimming of the lamps"? Assuredly they cannot. The cry which they (“in ignorance we wot,”) oppose, the cry they would cry down, the cry— “Behold, the bridegroom cometh” —this only shall effect it. Mistaken brethren! when will ye cease to set yourself in array against the very object of your prayers and aspirations? You pray, you long for, you groan after general awakening and concern. You are hastening on by these the very cry which you seek to cry down. Your prayers war with your teaching. Your teachings war with your prayers. Ye fight against your own holiest aspirations. Pray on! The midnight cry shall drown all other cries. Every opposing voice shall shortly pass away, even as the idle murmurings of the wind. For so this solemn revelation reads: “AT MIDNIGHT THERE WAS A CRY MADE, BEHOLD, THE BRIDEGROOM COMETH; GO YE OUT TO MEET HIM. THEN ALL THOSE VIRGINS AROSE, AND TRIMMED THEIR LAMPS.”

The verse which next ensues appears to suggest very singular application. Its import seems remarkable indeed. “And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out.” Did they entertain the notion of their being in the possession of the wise some treasury of superogatory grace? They were Papists, on this point at least. Not so the wise ones. They said, “Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you.” These were Protestants to a man, at least on this greatly controverted point. Whatever any of them, wise or foolish, had been called—whatever had been the place of their communion, only the foolish held the false notion of supererogation grace; the wise unanimously denied it. Such, too, was the result of praying to the saints for grace. “Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.” They could point their foolish companions to the true treasury of grace. So indeed can any saint minister grace to his fellow, even by the ministration of the truth—the truth which He who only can directly impart grace ever uses as the vehicle of his behests. But this was not what was requested by the foolish. Strange, indeed, that this notion of supererogation—of a church treasury of superfluous grace—applicable to the case of those who need such help; strange, indeed, that this notion should in fact be held, avowedly, by the immense majority of the so-called Christians of the age.

“While they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went with him unto the marriage, and the door was shut.” Even Christendom itself, so called, was not converted, as a whole, when the personal return of the bridegroom took place. How much less then, the world at large! This is the end of Christendom. It must be removed out of the way, before there will be a converted world. The complete ingathering comprises only the wise virgins and the previously dead in Christ. The door is shut—the door—not of conversion—but into the marriage supper. Only those previously converted—those only who had taken oil in their vessels—were ready for admission through this door. The world's conversion is a subsequent event. This is the fate of Christendom.

Whence then the notion of the gradual growth of the church unto universality? Whence the notion that the church ever will include the whole world's population? Surely not hence—not from this wondrous scripture. No; there is no such teaching in any scripture. The church will be but as a little flock when the chief Shepherd re-appears. Those alive and remaining, with the dead in Christ, complete it. The spirits of the just men made perfect, of the previous age, these friends of the bridegroom (see John 3:29), shall stand in the bridegroom's presence, and hear him, and rejoice in seeing that he who only is worthy of the bride now has her by his side. The saints of the past dispensation, then, will be, apparently, the bridegroom's friends; those of the present dispensation will constitute his bride; whilst those of the yet future and millennial dispensation will constitute his subjects. “O the depth both of the wisdom and knowledge of God.” “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.”

Such, then, is the one grand predicted re-awakening, and such its result. “They that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut. Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.” Would that the universal church, so call, could hear even now the solemn conclusion of this parable: “Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour.” S.

Our Portion and Occupation

The more Christ is objectively our portion and occupation, the more shall we resemble him subjectively.

Our Study

The Second Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians. London: T. H. Gregg, 24, Warwick Lane.

In making known this new version of 2 Corinthians to our readers, we would cite a few of the notes as a sample of what may be looked for. On 2 Cor. 1, 5 the following remark is made— “I would take this opportunity of drawing attention to the difference between ‘Christ' and 'the Christ.' ‘The Christ' is the designation of a condition, not a name; 'Christ' is a name. Not only these are not used indifferently, but in the gospels, where the word is used alone, it is almost invariably ‘the Christ'—the Messiah, or anointed—while in the epistles it is rarely so. It is used as a name. Some cases are doubtful, because the structure of the Greek phrase requires or prefers the articles. This is the case here. However, on the whole, I believe the article should be inserted here in English.” So, again, it is an interesting observation on 2 Cor. 3, 7 that” it is not said that the ministry was glorious, but that the system was introduced with glory—ἐγενήθη έν δόξη. It is in contrast with 'subsisting in glory.'“ Accordingly, the proposed versions runs, verses 7, 8,... 11, “But if the ministry of death in letters, graven in stones, began with glory, so that the children of Israel could not fix their eyes on the face of Moses, on account of the glory of his face, [a glory] which is annulled: how shall not rather the ministry of the Spirit subsist in glory?... For if that annulled [was introduced] with glory, how much rather that which abides [subsists] in glory?” That annulled, or done away, as the translator adds in a note, is used sometimes a little harshly here. But the apostle uses it as a formula for the old covenant done away in Christ. If this be borne in mind, the harshness will disappear, and the sense be clearer by adhering to the use of it.

Our Study: Notes on the Book of Genesis.

London: Gregg, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.

Here is a little work which may be safely and strongly recommended, as a suitable book, both for inquiring Christians who desire to search into the living oracles, and for those whose souls are at all awakened to their true condition. It traverses a large and varied surface, inasmuch as the book of scripture of which it treats is, when typically viewed, one of the richest tracts where all is rich. It also abounds in forcible appeals to every heart, in plain, perspicuous language.

The Apocalypse of Saint John. A New Translation, Metrically arranged with Scripture Illustration. London: Jackson & Walford, 18 St. Paul's Churchyard. 1856.

An interesting attempt to arrange the one prophetical book of the New Testament according to the parallelistic method of Old Testament poetry. There are a few turns given, in the translation, which are not unhappy; but, on the whole, it fails in representing the apostle John's majestic simplicity. Who, indeed, has succeeded? Mr. Godwin, however, not only imparts too free and modern an air, but he inclines a great deal too much to the not unfrequently rash changes of Lachmann and other critics. In one instance (Rev. 2:13) he has gone beyond all, and ventures to give a verb, instead of the proper name Antipas, and to render the clause, “and in the days thou wast arraigned.” He says that in this he follows some of the oldest MSS. and Versions. Now it is true that the Coptic diverges in one direction, the Syriac, &c, in another, and that the Alexandrian copy, followed by some later ones, spells the word so as possibly to mean a verb; but we are not aware of any authority for Mr. G.'s version, and we have no doubt that a man's name is intended. Mr. G. leans toward the Neronic date, in spite of the testimony of Irenwus; and this upon the slender ground that the internal evidence (i.e., his view) points to the time before the fall of Judaism and Jerusalem. Accordingly Mr. G. makes the seals refer to Jews, the trumpets to idolaters, and the vials “to those who, giving their homage to force and fraud, are really worshippers of Satan” —a scheme in evident accordance with German mysticism and directly tending to blunt the edge of this sharp, prophetic sword of the Lord.

Overflow of the Banks of the Jordan

The passage in Josh. 3:15, referred to in a proposed query in which it is said, that “Jordan overflows all its banks all the time of harvest,” is a mistranslation. The Hebrew word male, rendered in our authorized version, “overflows,” has no such meaning; but signifies fills, and ought to have been so translated— “Jordan fills all its banks,” &c. That is, it runs with its banks brim-full during that season of the year; which is in accordance with its present state, as observed by travelers.

Thoughts on the Parables in Matthew 13: 1.

The rejection of Jesus as Messiah by the Jews, and their being cast off in consequence, for a season, was the occasion, foreseen by God, of bringing to pass His gracious purpose, that salvation should be offered to all men, whether Jew or Gentile. Jesus takes to Himself a new name, and fills new offices. Servants had been sent to the husbandmen keeping the vineyard, and at last the Son: we know how they were treated. “He came to his own [things], and his own [people] received him not.” The miracles, which He wrought in their sight, were by them attributed to Satanic power; and the unpardonable sin was committed in blaspheming the Holy Ghost. Had they received Him, doubtless the kingdom would have been immediately established, and the Son of David would have sat upon the throne of David. But “the carnal mind is enmity against God,” and they would not have Jesus to reign over them. Does judgment immediately overtake them? No: their sin opened the floodgates for the display of God's most wondrous grace. He is about to gather some of every clime, and, by the operation of His Spirit, to unite them into the Church, in which the names of Jew and Gentile should not be known, where there is neither Greek nor barbarian, bond nor free; where there is only one bond of union, but that the most intimate—Christ the Bridegroom, and the Church the bride; He the Head, she the body; each individual a member of this body, and all members one of another, where the Holy Ghost Himself, by His actual presence, and personal indwelling in each saint, is the bond. There is formed and exhibited a union such as the Lord Himself referred to when He prayed, “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.” Meantime the earthly kingdom is in abeyance—the kingdom, of which Isaiah gives the moral picture in chaps. 11, 12; of which Ezekiel gives the sacred and metropolitan relations in the latter chapters of his prophecy, viz., the service of the temple, &c. the manifestation of the visible presence of God in a higher degree than was effected by the Shechinah of old, insomuch that the name of the city shall be “the LORD is there.” Daniel, also, gives its external relations with other kingdoms—if the term might be used, I would say the political aspect of the kingdom. It breaks up and destroys the Gentile powers. The Stone smiths the image, and the wind carries away the very dust of it, and every vestige is effaced. “He shall be king over all the earth.” This kingdom, we repeat, is postponed that the heirs may be gathered for heavenly glory.

How great the love of our God! He became poor that we might be made rich. He put in abeyance His glory as God, the ever blessed second person of the Trinity. He gave up His power, and dominion, and government, and majesty as the heir of David's throne, as king of Israel, and as He whose name should be honored among the Gentiles, that there might be associated with Him, in His future glory, a Bride who is to pass through the same sufferings (save that of atonement,) to fill up that which remains of the sufferings of Christ, then to be presented perfect to the Bridegroom, free from all taint of sin, spotless, and holy. Oh, if every Christian did but know and act up to his glorious calling! How soon might we not hail His return, and the rapture of the saints!

But to return to our chapter—Christ comes not to the vine, the symbol of the Jewish nation in its religious aspect, seeking fruit, but commences a new work. He is a sower going forth to sow.

The first parable is not said to be a similitude of the kingdom. The seed is called the word of the kingdom, and the effect produced upon different characters is illustrated by the seed falling upon different ground. The opposition which the seed—the word -meets with is shown also: “Some fell by the wayside, and the fowls came and gathered them up.” The Lord explains, “When any one heareth the word of the kingdom and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he that received seed by the way-side.” The truth of God makes no impression on his mind, which is under the power and dominion of the father of lies—the power of death. It is an exceedingly desperate case. The soul is completely in Satan's hands, and appears to be the farthest removed from the life-giving power of the word of God—of the word of Him who is the resurrection and the life. The second case is equally bad, though apparently not so unpromising. The seed is received into stony ground: such are they who receive the word joyfully, but yet with the mind and feelings merely. The intellect may admire the truth, so far as it is understood; the natural affections of the heart may be acted upon by the exhibition of a crucified Savior; but it is a superficial reception. The truth, though admired, is not permitted to search the soul, and to probe the conscience, and (resting only in the affections and understanding which are but “the flesh”) no wonder that when tribulation and persecution arise because of the word, such are offended. The hindering power in the third case is equally clear. The cares of this age, the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things, are all of the world, and opposed to the Father. “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him,”

There is exhibited in these three instances the antagonism of the devil, the flesh, and the world, to the word of the Lord. There was the death-stupor of the first, no feeling, no apprehension of the truth, without understanding, like the beasts that perish. There was immediate joyful acting in the second, but the conscience was not reached. The necessity of self-abasement was not felt, and, for the time, opposition was dormant. But when self-denial was called for, when it became necessary to take up the cross, then the fleshly love of ease rose up in opposition; and they are “offended,” notwithstanding the partial light and understanding—so inveterate is the enmity between the flesh and the Spirit. The lust of the eye and the pride of life, developing themselves in the cares of this world and in the deceitfulness of riches, show their antagonism to the life-giving word in the third case. All are opposed to God; and though this opposition is manifested in different ways, yet are they all in the end fatal and destructive. Perhaps we may see, in these three cases, the opposition that is manifested to the Son, as administering the power of the kingdom against the wicked one; to the Spirit, as overcoming or detecting the workings and deceitful power of the flesh; to the Father, in contrast with the love of the world. For the way-side hearer is quite enthralled by the power of death and Satan; the stony ground bearer shows the flesh lusting against the Spirit; and the hearer choked with the cares, &c., of this world exhibits the love of the world as an antagonistic principle to the love of the Father. The devil, the flesh, and the world, combine to oppose the Son, the Spirit, and the Father—the Three-one God.

The good-ground hearer is the exact opposite of the way-side hearer: the latter does not understand, the former does. In the two other cases there is the appearance, but not the fruit. Here we have the manifestation of the power of God, by which the devil, the flesh and the world are overcome; and according to their subjection to the word sown in their hearts, they bring forth fruit, some thirty-fold, some sixty-fold, and some an hundred fold. Has this threefold division of the good-ground hearers any reference to the three powers of opposition? In the progress of the believer from the power of death to the full enjoyment of the life of God, the Son, the Spirit, and the Father all work. We do not mean that the believer progresses from knowing the Son to the Spirit and the Father; but if the believer, although passed from death to life, through the application of the atoning blood of Christ, does not in all things yield to the teaching of the Holy Spirit, is not he so far under the power of the flesh? Is he not carnal? (Compare 1 Cor. 1; 3) And if so, how can be enjoyed, and how manifested that supreme love of the Father, which is seen' only by and in those who are practically crucified to the world, and the world to them? Is it not true that the love of the world exposes us to yield to the flesh, and that the yielding to the flesh tends to bring under the power of Satan?

Thoughts on the Parables in Matthew 13: 2. Seed

The question may be asked, Why are the hearts of some compared to good ground, when the scripture teaches, that all hearts are “deceitful and desperately wicked?” Not because there is anything naturally good therein. Facts only are presented here; the operating cause is not; it is simply the fact of the preaching of the word, and the reception of it.

In some cases there is brutish insensibility, or cold indifference; in others, a paramount love for, or fear of, the world. All this may, in the natural man, be owing to, or at least aggravated by, constitutional and educational differences; but in all cases, without the preparation of the heart by the Holy Ghost to receive the word, there would be unfruitfulness.

While, then, on the one hand, there is no intimation of the grace which prepares the heart (which is quite outside of man's exertion or intelligence) so that it becomes like the good ground, on the other, nothing is said as to the cause of the rejection of the word. Our Lord does say, “They had no root;” but even this is matter of fact rather than the cause. Man is responsible for the reception of the word; and his responsibility comes out prominently here. (ver. 9.) That which the Spirit of God does present is first the preaching of the word, then its reception, or rejection, as the case may be; and this quite distinct from the secret spring which operates to produce reception.

(Ver. 24.) “Another parable,” &c. In the preceding parable we have the word of the kingdom; the good seed has been sown, the gospel has been preached. The kingdom of heaven is now begun. We are carried forward in advance of the moment when the Lord was speaking. The kingdom commenced when Jesus had ascended (i.e. the mysteries of the kingdom); it will only be when He comes again, that the kingdom will be established in power. We have now presented to us three pictures of the kingdom under three different aspects, but all of them external. The standpoint whence we view it is the earth. We have had a parabolic description of the introduction of Christianity into the world. A new order of things was then about to take place, a new dispensation, where the visible glory of God would not be manifested as it had been in the holy of holies within the veil of the temple, but the establishment of a kingdom on the earth to be under the rule of Christ Himself dwelling in heaven. But this kingdom would be marred and spoiled by the enemy; yet would men profess to have Christ for their king. MYSTERIES truly!—man, calling himself a Christian, in league with the world that rejected and crucified the King, condemning the world that did it, yet loving the world, and denying the right and the truth of the King coming again to take what is His own. “Why speakest thou.... in parables?” Because it is not given to the multitude, to those outside, to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.

And in the present hour the kingdom of heaven is a mystery to the world. Only those inside, in the house, can know them. Before the multitude our Lord proceeds to give an account of the kingdom, a parabolic and prophetic description of it, right on to the end, when the mysteries will cease, and there will be the open and visible establishment of it in power. The Lord does not speak of the Father's purpose in permitting such an anomalous state of the kingdom to exist. Of this He spoke to His disciples in the house, when the multitude were sent away. There He speaks to them anticipatively of their future position, and calling while yet on the earth, viz., destined for heavenly places. They were told of their existence in the purpose of God before the world was, that they in their corporate capacity were a treasure to Him, yea, “one pearl of great price.” It is only when we are in the house with Jesus, that we can enter into the views of the kingdom unfolded in the last three parables contained in this chapter. But previously (verses 1-33) the Lord sits by the sea-side, outside for the multitude, and He gives them three distinct pictures of the kingdom of heaven, the first of them terminating with the end. It is worthy of notice that the Lord gives us the plain teaching of two of His parables, which is a divine assistance to a right understanding of the others. In the parable of the tares and the wheat, the distinction between the real and the merely nominal professor is preserved. There are real disciples in the marred kingdom, as well as in the field there is wheat. Their entire separation takes place only in the end. In the parables of the tree and of the leaven, this distinction is not noticed; it is the general character of the kingdom. It would seem as if the wheat, the children of the kingdom, bear so small a proportion to the tares, that they fail to give a general character to it: they are apparently lost sight of. In fact the tree exhibits the kingdom of heaven as a great earthly power, and the leaven presents us with its doctrinal character. The position of the children, even their existence, is not noticed in these two.

Let us look a little at the tare-field. The good seed is sown by the Son of man, and the field is the world, i.e., it is the place where the kingdom is established. All that is good is the work of the Son of man; all that is evil in the work of the enemy. The tares do not represent all the evil that is in the world, but all the evil in connection with the kingdom. They have been brought into the field (the world) among the wheat, by the arch-foe, for the very purpose of marring the work of the Lord. But although the outward aspect of the kingdom be spoiled, yet the purpose of God in permitting it—nay, strange, but sweet truth, the very purpose of God which was (to speak as men) contingent upon the rejection of the King, and the mysteries of the kingdom—was entirely beyond the reach, if not the ken, of the enemy; for the word of God cannot fail— “He shall see of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied.” Let the external character of the kingdom be ruined, yet in it, though hidden, there shall be found those who are in reality “the children of the kingdom.” But it is a solemn truth that the character which the kingdom takes is from those “who profess and call themselves Christians,” and of these professors so outnumbering are the tares, that the entire aspect of the kingdom is spoiled, and no longer exhibits that which it ought to have exhibited, viz., that which would correspond to the Sower and to the seed. The term professor is used in its most extensive application. The true disciple is symbolized by wheat, evil men by tares. These evil men are not at first visible, but by and by they are developed. “When the blade sprung up, then appeared the tares also;” and this state of things is to continue, for the tares are not to be gathered up, they are to grow with the wheat, until the harvest. So long as the present dispensation lasts, so long will there be evil and wicked men found in connection with Christianity, enjoying the outward blessings and privileges which it confers, and even in some instances professing actual discipleship to Christ. How very soon the tares appeared even during the lives of the apostles! What a character is theirs, as portrayed by Peter, by Jude, and by Paul, who tells us that the mystery of iniquity was working in his time! In the end there will be the full development of it, after the hindrance is removed (2 Thess. 2). It is not intended to assert that “that wicked” will arise out of the professing church, although it may be so, but out of that confused and heterogeneous mass, resulting from the unholy union which now subsists between the world and the professing church.

True, there is a company of real disciples—the children of the kingdom. They are warned of the tares: the doom of Christendom is made known to them, a doom far more fearful than that of apostate man in any other dispensation. The tares will be bound in bundles for the fire. But there is a hope for the children of God, the good seed. They shall escape, and be out of the great tribulation.

These, however, as distinct from the mere professor, are not under consideration in this parable. The territory embraced within the limits of the kingdom, is that which is called Christendom, and it is those dwelling within those limits that give character to the kingdom. It is a mixed character, and such it must remain. The servants to whom the keeping of the field was entrusted fell asleep; and meanwhile the enemy sows tares: when they awake, they essay at once to remedy the evil which had crept in by their unwatchfulness. Nay, says the Lord, “lest ye root up also the wheat.” Behold, here, the tender care that the Lord takes of His own! Rather than one single ear of wheat should be injured or pulled up before it was ripe, let the tares grow; rather than the little body of true believers should be broken up in its infancy, ere the Bride he ready for the Bridegroom, let the judgment upon the wicked be suspended. The true sons of the kingdom must be perfected, whose names were written in the book of life before the world was. The Lord could not come in judgment before these are all secured. Therefore the servants are not allowed to act in judgment. Let the tares alone. The children of God now stand in grace, and only grace must they exhibit; they have nothing at all to do with earthly judgment. Let the tares alone. If they could not keep the tares out, when the field was free from them, much less can they root them out now— “Lest ye root up also the wheat.”

Is not this same care for His people seen in the long respite vouchsafed to the antediluvians? Not only is the long-suffering of God seen, who bore long with the sinners before the flood, and gave them space for repentance, when even every day that Noah worked at the ark, and every plank, and every nail, and every stroke of his hammer, was a warning, and a threatening of the impending judgment; but God could do nothing till Noah was safe in the ark, after He Himself had shut him in: even then there was a respite of seven days (perfect forbearance). But if Noah had been as long again, until he was shut up safe in the ark, so long would judgment have been delayed.

So also in the case of the five cities of the plain. Lot must be provided for before the fiery storm could descend. The Lord said He could do nothing till Lot was gone out of the city, and the little city Zoar was spared for his sake and at his entreaty. For the sake of the righteous the wicked are spared. “Ye are the salt of the earth.” Had there been ten righteous men found in those five cities, they had been spared. And the world is now preserved because the children of God are in it, for “he is not willing that any should perish,” and all these, the true Church, must and will be taken out of it before judgment descends upon it. Then will the tares be not bound merely, but burnt; but the wheat will have been secured in the barn.

We have, then, this fact, that whatever phase the kingdom may present to the world, there will be some. good in it. Nothing is here said as to the amount of good or evil—simply that both are there; that they are really distinct the one from the other; but that this distinction will be made fully manifest only in the harvest.

Thoughts on the Parables in Matthew 13: 3. The Tree

In the parable of the tree, we have the representation of what the kingdom of heaven becomes in worldly greatness. That it is not what God intended is evident from the enemy's work recorded in the preceding parable. It must be borne in mind that the kingdom was presented to the responsibility of man; but he failed here, as everywhere else, where responsibility is in question. He slept; and while he slept the enemy sowed tares. Doubtless, it is for wise purposes that God permitted it, and all must result in the exaltation of His own grace; while at the same time, the fact that “men slept” proves the utter ruin and hopelessness of man in his natural state, and also that where anything depends upon his faithfulness, nothing but loss and condemnation can follow. Tares being found sown among the wheat must necessarily alter the appearance of the field, and in God's judgment it is spoiled. The servants perceived the altered appearance, and wished at once to remedy the evil. But it was wholly beyond their power; and lest in the endeavor to remedy this evil, they should commit a greater (i.e., root up some of the wheat), they were not allowed to attempt it. It no doubt is matter of sorrow and deep humiliation to those who are instructed in the kingdom to see it thus marred; but, knowing the will of God concerning it, they are not to meddle with it, but to be separate from all that bears the form of evil. The tares will be bound in bundles to be burnt. Man may not deem them to be offensive—rather are they pleasing to him, for he naturally loves all that is hateful to God. Possibly he may imagine them pleasing to God, for his understanding is darkened. But they are the work of the enemy. The dispensation of the kingdom, then, as a whole, awaits the judgment of God; and the same doom awaits it as befell the dispensation that preceded (Rom. 11:17-24). It is already been observed that these similitudes of the kingdom are prophetic; and what is presented in the tree is the picture of the kingdom as it becomes subsequently to, and in consequence of, the presence of the tares among the wheat. “Kingdom of heaven,” and “Church of God," do not signify the same thing precisely; they contain distinct ideas. But the calling of the Church takes place while the kingdom exists in mystery; and all the professors who are found in the field claim to belong, in some sort, to the Church. This greatly modifies the position of those comprehended within (if we may so say) the boundaries of the kingdom. Many things are true of God's Church (real members we here speak of) which cannot be predicated of the subjects of the kingdom, as such simply. The being members of Christ's body, the Church, or bride, involves privileges, and responsibilities too, which are beyond those of the kingdom merely; but, seeing they assume this position, they lie under increased obligations. More than this, it follows that the professing body is here under the similitude of a tree, and whatever the character, of the tree before God, such is the character of the nominal Church.

(Ver. 31.) “Another parable put he forth,” &c. The kingdom of heaven is symbolized by a grain of mustard seed, which becomes a great tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof. We have not the explanation of both these symbols given us in this chapter; but we have them in God's book, which therefore alone furnishes the key by which we may unlock the meaning of this parable. To look elsewhere is to dishonor it and the Spirit of God. Every symbol in His word has also its meaning there. However contrary it may be to any cherished human theory, it behooves us to accept His explanation, and to reject every other. We find, in Ezek. 31:3-9, the Assyrian power compared to a great tree, a mighty cedar in Lebanon. His branches are fair, his boughs cast a broad shadow, in them the fowls of heaven make their nest, under them the beast of the field bring forth their young. “I have made him fair by the multitude of his branches: so that all the trees of Eden, that were in the garden of God, envied him.” It is evident here that Assyria is a vast power, for great nations dwelt under his shadow. It is under the similitude of a tree; and the fowls that nestled in his branches, and the beasts that sought protection and shelter under them, are, according to the word of God, the surrounding nations. We do not enter into the moral character of the antitype. All that is necessary now to observe is that the tree typifies a towering earthly power.

Again, we have the prophecy of the Lord's kingdom established in power, under a similar image, (Ezek. 17:22-24) and here also is a place for fowl of every wing. This is the millennial kingdom described in Isa. 11—the Lord's earthly glory, when He will reign in righteousness and power, giving forth His law from mount Zion, and holding in subjection all nations. “All the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord.” That the trees are here mentioned (i.e., the earth's grandees and powers) in connection with the tree of the Lord's planting is evidence that this prophecy looks forward to the millennium, when every power and Gentile dynasty shall recognize the superiority of the kingdom of the Son of David. In a word, this is the kingdom established in power (and not the mysterious form of the kingdom of heaven, which is the subject in the parables). But here, as in the former case, setting aside the moral character of the kingdom, it is a great power over the earth that is foretold. Turn now to Dan. 4. Here is Nebuchadnezzar himself under the similitude of a great tree. All the power of the kingdom was absolutely vested in his own person. More instances might be adduced; but these are sufficient to show that a tree in scripture is used to typify an earthly power, for good or ill.

Hence we conclude that the kingdom of heaven has assumed the aspect and the position of an earthly power; that is to say, the result of bringing in the Christian dispensation has been that men have availed themselves of Christianity, and have used the name of Christ, for the development of a vast hierarchical power, for the establishment of a kingdom, which as represented by the tree, has shot forth its branches and extended itself far and wide. Shelter, protection, and a habitation are given to the birds of the air (“they lodge in the branches thereof”); and this is dignified with the name of the “Church of God."

And if we take ever so cursory a view of Christendom, (which we take to be the wheat and tare field,) the connection between the nations and powers of the world, and the nominal church, is plain. The so-called church lends her influence and authority to the rulers of the world, and they use the name of Christ to further their own political views, to extend their own power, and to crush that of their opponents, whether these opponents are professed enemies to the name of Christ or not. Does not history furnish abundant proof? Has not the pathway of the nominal Church, ever since its first union with the world in the person of the emperor Constantine, been a systematic grasping at the things of the world, seeking for power, for wealth, for worldly influence, for connection with the rulers of the world; yea, to hold even them under authority! What do we see now in Europe? The last was originated in a dispute about the so-called “holy places” in Jerusalem. The pretensions of the Emperor of Russia to the protectorate of Christians in Turkey are well known, as is the claim of the French Emperor to represent the Latin Church. All are agreed that the ruling motives were aggrandizement of self and extension of empire. Need we allude to things nearer home—the pronouncing of blessings upon soldiers, and arms, and banners? What is this but using the name of Christ for mere political purposes A mighty engine it once was, and may yet be, to move the populace, and to make the desires of ambition popular. But in the sight of God, of Christ, whose name is thus dishonored, how awful! That which calls itself by the name of Christ is extending its branches, seeking to be identified with every movement in the world, inviting the birds of the air to take shelter in its branches, and saying, I sit as a queen, and shall see no sorrow. There may be no necessity for supposing that such an earthly power as a tree represents is wicked in the abstract. Other circumstances will determine whether it be a good or an evil. But when the Church, whose calling is not earthly, but heavenly, whose city is not formed by hands but built and made of God, which is called to be separate from the world—it crucified to the world and the world crucified to it, then we perceive that connection with earthly power becomes a positive departure, an apostasy.

Alas! the professing church is a part of the world, enjoys its power and ease, seeks its emoluments and honors. To say nothing of Romanism, which is a professed ruler over secular powers, do not the Protestant bodies covet and contend eagerly for the prizes of the earth? Do we not see the means and appliances of the world brought to bear upon the extension of what they call Christianity? True, we are told that the “silver and gold,” which Christendom boasts in now, is gathered for the extension of the gospel; but is this the divine way of spreading the good news? When the Lord commissioned His disciples to go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature, did He mean them to raise funds from the Gentiles? Doubtless, it is the duty of the Church of God to provide for the wants of those who preach and teach, if needy; but does the going about and begging of the world a maintenance show faith or love? Is this the teaching of Gal. 6, or 1 Cor. 9, or 3 John? And then what a complicated machinery! How full of earthly contrivances! Past history and present facts confirm the prophetic view given in the parable.

Thoughts on the Parables in Matthew 13: 4. Leaven

IN the parable of the grain of mustard seed becoming a great tree, we have the kingdom of heaven as a power in the earth subduing other powers, and as such seeking prominency in the world. The rulers in it have had for their professed object the extension of the name of Christ, but this name in their hands was a means merely to exercise their own ambition. They sought to enlarge the bounds of Christendom, and succeeded in the attempt. In the prosecution of their design they have displayed the greatest energy and the most untiring zeal, they have evinced a readiness and aptitude to use all the appliances that the world could afford. The most astute policy has characterized the measures, framed by some, followed by most, which had for their aim the bringing of the temporal power to acknowledge the superiority of the spiritual. Sovereigns have been urged to oppress their subjects; subjects have been incited to rebel against their sovereigns; divide and conquer was the secret maxim which governed all their proceedings. The lust of earthly grandeur is discernible long before the secular power of the empire allied itself to the professing Church when Constantine made Christianity the religion of the empire. But this alliance once made, the corruption which adversity and persecution had in some degree held in check showed itself boldly; and flattery and intrigue, and all the arts that men use to obtain influence, were employed by those who claimed to be followers of the apostles, and to have the care of the Church. The kings of the earth were courted by the servants of Him whom these kings took counsel together to destroy. What a change came over the profession of Christianity! Christians are called to suffer NOW that they might reign THEN. But instead of suffering, the high places of the earth were coveted and obtained. Satan offered the glory of the world to Christ if He would worship him— “for that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will I give it.” (Luke 4:6.) Jesus would not have glory from the devil. But Christians have had this glory, Christians still enjoy and seek it. Who gave it them? By what means did they possess it? “To whomsoever I will I give it.” Solemn thought! the power and the glory that Christ rejected the professing church greedily covets. We have societies composed of some real Christians, but for the most part of nominal Christians and worldlings, for the avowed purpose of propagating Christianity. They yield a something to each other. The one has civilization for his object, the amelioration of the world; the other yet professes to aim at Christianizing the world. But is civilization the (yea, an) object of the Christian missionary? Does he not call to separation from the world? “Let the dead bury their dead,” &c. To spread the gospel and the truth is the work of the Christian, and of him alone; the means and the agencies employed should be Christian and not worldly. If the tares and the wheat join to promote Christianity, alas for the wheat! How can such concord exist? How can these two walk together?

Is it not that the place and calling of the Church of God has been forgotten, and the kingdom of heaven has rather become in men's apprehension a kingdom of the earth? If any ask why God permitted such confusion, there can be but one answer: the enemy sowed tares in the field; the work of the sower for the present was spoiled, and judgment was certain. But though known to God, it was not manifest to men, and the worldliness, the effect of the presence of the tares, must be made manifest; for it is the way of God to make evil manifest before punishing it. The persecutions which the early Church suffered were lessons of God, and might have shown the antagonism of the world; but when these divine teachings were disregarded, and the spirit of the world still infected the professing body like an incurable disease, God gave it up to follow its own will, allowing it to fall into the world's arms—to become a mere vine of the earth, doomed to destruction. The true position of the Church, as the body and expression of the glorified Christ, was very soon lost. The Holy Ghost, as the animating and directing energy, was grieved, hindered, and practically denied; and by degrees earthly hopes began to displace the waiting for Christ from heaven. The barrier which the Lord had established to prevent the influx of worldliness being broken down, there was nothing to prevent the professing body, as a whole, from becoming thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the world; and the consequence was the substituting of a religion made up of Jewish ceremonies, heathen rites, and worldly principles, for the faith once delivered to the saints. This seems to be the leavening of the lump.

“Another parable spake he unto them, The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven,” &c. Here we have the kingdom presented, not as a secular worldly power, but as a principle or doctrine which thoroughly pervades all that is submitted to its influence. There are some who conceive this parable to be descriptive of the grace of God in the soul. But while the kingdom of God is said to be “righteousness and peace,” &c., it is never so said of the kingdom of heaven, which is always dispensational, and not moral merely. The kingdom of heaven is ever the kingdom of God, but the expression “kingdom of God” does not always mean “kingdom of heaven.” This parable, too, be it remarked, in common with those preceding, was spoken outside to the multitude, giving an external picture of the kingdom which sets aside another idea, viz., that the leaven is symbolical of real Christianity, spreading universally until the whole world be converted. But there is no such prediction respecting the gospel in the whole book of God; on the contrary, in the very first parable in. this chapter, out of four classes to whom the word is preached, there is only one class which brings forth fruit. It is inferred that the word will not be universally received. In the field the tares, as such, continue to the end; they do not become wheat. In the parable of the net, there were caught both good and bad fishes. All exhibit the same truth, that evil men will be found in every age up to the end. There are many passages in the Old Testament which foretell a time when all in Israel shall know the Lord, from the least even unto the greatest; a time of all but universal blessedness. But nowhere is it said that this will be the effect of preaching only; other and far different means besides will he used to accomplish this. The unprejudiced mind may easily know that all these passages predicting future peace and happiness for the world refer to a future age, to be ushered in by judgment upon those that have not received the gospel. Another reason for rejecting the above interpretation is, that it gives to the symbol “leaven,” a meaning which it has nowhere else in scripture. Leaven never suggests the idea of anything good. Wherever used, it is symbolical of corruption. In the Mosiac economy all the types which have an especial reference to Christ were free from leaven. Where the worship of the saint was shadowed forth, there was leaven, as denoting the presence of the flesh, which though mortified, and by the energy of the Holy Spirit kept under, yet will ever be present while he is dwelling in this present world. It will only be when the mortal and the corruptible shall be changed into the immortal and the incorruptible, that worship shall be free from the effects of the flesh. So in its most virulent and worst forms, as exhibiting the extreme enmity of the unrenewed heart against God, the hypocrisy of the Pharisees is called leaven. We read too of the leaven of Herod. The apostle Paul speaks of the unleavened bread of sincerity, and here, by implication, leaven symbolizes hypocrisy. It may be remarked also, but with no desire to press it beyond its legitimate import, that the hiding of the leaven is not the act of the Lord.

The parable, then, presents the universal diffusion of the Christian religion within certain limits—not the growth of faith or the communication of life, which is rather represented by the wheat which took root in the ground; not the rise and progress of an ecclesiastic-secular power, “a great tree,” resembling the symbols of an Egyptian or Babylonish dynasty; but a definite sphere filled with the profession of Christ. It is the state of the kingdom which will bear a resemblance to the act of a woman who hides leaven in three measures of meal until the whole be leavened. To all but God the distinction between good and evil is lost. Outwardly it is an indiscriminate mass which bears the name of Christ. God simply shows us here the historical fact; and the external appearance is a lump thoroughly leavened. As the tree represented Christendom aspiring to power in the earth, so the leaven, spreading over the three measures of meal, sets forth Christian doctrine professed and propagated throughout a given sphere. It does not appear to be the design of the Lord to pronounce a moral sentence in these early parables to the multitude. Of course the spiritual man ought to judge of all things; but here the object is to represent such facts as meet the eye and mind of men outside. Nor have they failed to be observed, as will appear from the following passage of Guizot's History of Civilization in Europe— “The Church was a society regularly constituted, having principles, rules, and discipline of its own, and actuated by an ardent desire to extend its influence, and to vanquish its conquerors. Among the Christians of that epoch [when the barbarians broke up the Roman empire], in the ranks of the clergy, there where men who had pondered deeply upon all moral and political questions, who held fixed opinions and energetic sentiments upon all things, and strove strenuously to, propagate them and render them paramount. No society ever made such efforts as did the Christian church, from the fifth to the tenth century, TO EXTEND ITS SPHERE, AND SMOOTH THE EXTERNAL WORLD INTO ITS OWN LIKENESS. When we study its particular history, we shall perceive the full extent of its labors. It attacked barbarism, as it were, on all its sides, to civilize by subduing it.” This was just the leavening process going on under the hand of the “woman.” Alas! we know it was but the spread of corrupt Christianity; so that here, as elsewhere, the leaven had, in fact, its usual counterpart. Nor does even doctrine remain sound where there is the mere unhallowed desire of spreading profession, and where the heart is not subject to God, and purified by faith. Thus, throughout Christendom, systematic Judaizing became the rule, mingled with not a few accommodations of heathen rites and practices, in order to please the multitude and facilitate their so-called conversion.

The Church was regarded as an improvement and complement of the Jewish polity. Israel's restoration and future hopes were denied, and so the ruin was helped on; because the Gentiles began to regard the forfeited place of the Jews as their own. Thus becoming earthly, they rose in their own conceit, liable and sure in God's time to be cut off. (Rom. 11)

R. B.

Thoughts on the Parables in Matthew 13: 5. The House

The multitude are sent away, and Jesus goes into the house with His disciples. They say, “declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field.” They had asked, (ver. 10,) “why speakest thou unto them in parables?” and the Lord's answer shows the awful position of the Jews. They were become a rejected people. Lo-ammi was written upon them. They had been a people separated to God. They had been a vineyard planted in a pleasant place, walled in. and kept apart from the surrounding Gentiles by rites and ceremonies of God's own instituting, by a law and ordinances of His giving, and righteousness was demanded of them. They failed in producing righteousness. God looked for grapes, and behold wild grapes. Prophets, the messengers of God, were sent to them; but like the husbandmen in the parable, (Matt. 21:33,) they “beat one, killed another, and stoned another.” Promise and threatening, blessing and chastisement, entreaty, expostulation, and reproach were all used, but in vain. The tenderest appeals were made by God. He reminds them of all that He had done to draw them to obedience, but they will not hear. What anxiety, if we may use the word, is seen in the messages sent through the prophets, that they might escape impending judgment! Everything necessary was there to maintain them in their exalted position, had they been obedient. “He hath showed thee, O man, what is good, and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God” (Mic. 6:8). But the kingdom must be brought to them, that their rejection of it may be made public to the world. John the Baptist cried, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” Repentance, confession, and baptism were the means pointed out by him for an entrance into, or preliminaries for, the kingdom. But him they beheaded. Jesus comes and preaches the advent of the kingdom. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” He comes with His hands full of blessing; He gives numerous instances of His power and goodness; He went about “healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people,” casting out devils and banishing them from the land, samples of the blessing and the power of the kingdom, brought for their acceptance, but by them rejected. They would not have the kingdom with Christ. His citizens hated Him, saying, “we will not have this man to reign over us.” They ascribed His power, in casting out devils, to Beelzebub, the prince of the devils (chap. 9). But Jesus still works in grace: it is not quite over with them yet. He sends His disciples to herald the coming of the kingdom in all their cities, to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, forbidding them to go in the way of the Gentiles. Though they had rejected Christ, they had not yet publicly rejected them. But whether one lamented to them, they mourned not, or piped; they danced not; that is to say, in whatever way the testimony of God came, there was no response. The testimony of God was ever rejected by them, save by a remnant. The Pharisees seek to kill Jesus, and He hides Himself. They put the seal to their iniquity and condemnation in again ascribing His work to the prince of the devils (chap. 12:21). Now they are judged.

The Lord decidedly breaks with them. Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven, neither in this age nor in that to come; and Jesus severs the natural tie which connected Him, as the Messiah after the flesh, with them, and only acknowledges the relationship of obedience to His Father. They tell Him that His mother and His brethren desire to speak to Him. But who are His mother and brethren? He points to His disciples— “Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.” This rejection of Jesus and the consequent destruction of Jerusalem cut short all God's dealings with them as a nation for the time. They were set aside, and a new work, as we have seen, was entered upon. Meantime judicial blindness is sent upon them, and the saying of Esaias the prophet is fulfilled. Therefore He speaks to them in parables. (See verses 11-15). Before this the Lord had not spoken in parables, but now that He is the rejected One, now that Israel is cut off for the time, He speaks in parables—none understand but they whom He instructs. And the disciples take the place which Jesus had marked out for them. He called them His mother, and sister, and brethren, and in the holy nearness and confidence of this position, they say not, “Why speakest thou in parables?” but “Declare unto us.” &c. They are now within the house in presence of their Lord—alone with Jesus—happy place!—the multitude, or world outside. The separation is marked and distinct. Now there is communion. And where else can the Christian enjoy communion, save in the presence of Jesus? But this is the Christian's place, and he may ever be in the house with Jesus.

Even when the outer man is necessarily occupied with the things of this life, with the bread that perisheth, the inner man may be enjoying secret communion with God. The question of sin settled, the conscience at peace, and the heart at liberty, then is God able, and delights as a Father, to commune with His children. He hides nothing from them concerning the glory of Jesus. He tells them the thoughts and counsels He had concerning Jesus and His Church before the foundation of the world. He opens out before their eyes the prospect of future glory, which He gives to Jesus, and which Jesus gives to them (John 17:22). Even concerning the judgment of the world, He reveals to them His purpose— “Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do?” (Gen. 18:17.) “I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.” (John 15:15.) Dear reader, if you are a Christian, then, through the amazing grace of God, Jesus calls you His friend. He points to you as to His disciples of old, and says, “Behold my mother and my brethren.” To them, to us, it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. Mark the care of the Lord to instruct them fully, and to unfold the meaning of His parables. His world has its theories concerning the present age, and is forming plans for the future amelioration of its citizens, but how contrary to truth! Is not judicial blindness settling (as it certainly will) upon apostate Christendom, as it did upon apostate Israel? May we not say, on contrasting the prevailing doctrines and opinions of the mass in Christendom, what the Lord said of rejected Israel, “To them it is not given,” &c.?

But it is given; and accordingly the Lord not only explains the parable, but gives additional information. “The harvest is the end of the age;” and then at that time “the Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire. There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” The parable speaks of “good seed.” The Lord's explanation tells us the “good seed are the children of the kingdom.” There we read of “tares,” here “the children of the wicked one.” There, “an enemy hath done this,” here “the enemy is the devil.” Then there are “reapers,” here “the reapers are the angels. The servant wished to do the reapers' (the angels') work. Not so; the angels are the executioners of God's wrath. So does this teach us that it is not the province of the disciples of Christ, during His absence, and the time of His rejection, to do the work of judgment.

We are not taught to extirpate heresy and evil men by the strong arm of the sword; to do so is to depart from the proper place of the Christian. To bear testimony to Christ and against the evil, most assuredly; but to leave judgment in the hands of God, in the hands of Jesus; for, mark, He does not give up His title to the kingdom. Now He is patient and forbearing, but by and by He will send His angels, and they shall gather out of His KINGDOM all things that offend, and them that do iniquity. It is His kingdom yet, though an usurper reigns in His place. But He is coming, and will show “who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords.” Then the world, delivered from the thralldom of the oppressor, shall cease its groanings, and shall enjoy the rest and repose consequent upon the manifestation of the sons of God. (Rom. 8:19.) “So shall it be at the end of the world.” The phrase “end of the world” is frequently misunderstood. We are not taught that the harvest is the end of the world, the earth, but that it is the end of the dispensation or age which is characterized by the preaching of the kingdom (the true king, Christ, the Son of man, being rejected and absent, till He returns and establishes it in power and glory on the earth).

But the fact here communicated to the disciples was not given the multitude. In what was said to them everything took place in the field, in the world, excepting only the fact that the good seed would be taken out of it, and placed in the barn. It is a view of the present age. But in the house the Lord goes beyond the bounds of the present age, and we get a peep into the future one. There is the binding of the tares, the gathering of the wheat, the closing scenes of this age; but the curtain is lifted, and we have the terrible result of the judgment of the tares in the weeping and gnashing of teeth. On the other side, we behold the righteous shining as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. These are not established in the marred kingdom; it is in the kingdom of their Father that they shine; and this is the reason why there is no question of purging the field. There were better things reserved for us; and so we have now a new principle of the kingdom manifested, a principle with which the world outside has nothing to do. We have had the effects of the sowing, the facts of the mixing and the separation, and the consequent form of the kingdom. But now we have the hidden motive, a principle which is fully developed in the hearts of the “children of the kingdom,” and which Jesus brings out in the two next parables.

The Lord, though rejected by His own, would have a people, and He secures the object of his desire at the expense of all besides. So it is a principle with him who acts according to the understanding of the purpose of God, that he will esteem nothing in comparison with Christ. The principle of giving up all for Christ would not have existed if Christ had not been rejected: the taking up the cross and following Christ was the necessary result of rejection. And accordingly we do not get this principle in the parables to the multitude. But Christ, for the sake of the wheat in the field, suffers the rejection of the mass which rejection serves to bring out a new light upon the kingdom, and a higher glory upon them that are His. They shall shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. The use of the term “righteous” marks the saints of God in their individuality before and after the sowing of the seed. Deborah sang of this glory (Judg. 5:31), “So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord, but let them that love Him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might.” Daniel speaks of it also (chap. 12:2). It was a thought common to Old Testament saints. But no saint before was ever in the house with Jesus, none was before called “my brother, and sister, and mother;” and Jesus goes on unfolding more and more of the principles and purpose which actuate God during the present state of the kingdom. To us it is given to know them. May we be kept from our own thoughts about them.

Thoughts on the Parables in Matthew 13: 6. The Hid Treasure

“Again the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field,” &c. (Ver. 44.) The teaching of this and the following parables is for the disciples alone; they only are addressed. Here we have displayed the motive of God in giving His Son to die for the world. We discover that in the “hid treasure,” and in the “pearl of great price,” the field—the world—is bought for the sake of the treasure, and the “pearl of great price” is secured in the same way; the man in each case sells all that he has, in order to be possessed of the object of his desire. The hid treasure is the Church of God; not the nominal, professing, but the true Church, composed of regenerated men. For the sake of these the field was bought. The Christian dispensation was brought in that a people might be brought into such a position and state of glory as they could not possibly be brought into under the former dispensation. Not God's people merely, but predestinated to “the adoption of sons” (Eph. 1:5), by Jesus Christ to Himself.

The pearl of great price may, perhaps, refer rather to the individual glory of the Redeemer, as the head of the Church, “who, for the joy set before him, endured the cross, and despised the shame.” For when the kingdom is established in power, the Lord Jesus will not only have glory as God, one with the Father—that glory He has eternally; He will not only as Son of man have glory, as the King over all the earth; He will not only, as Son of David, have glory as King of the Jews—for His glory as King of the Jews is distinct from His universal supremacy over all the earth—but He will have another glory which we believe to be far more precious to Him, the glory that He will have as the head of the Church, when the Church shall be glorified with Him.

This will be, we may, perhaps say, the glory of His grace. The parables of the “treasure” and the “pearl” are intimately connected and reflect upon each other; for it is by the grace of God, through Christ, and the transforming power of the indwelling Spirit, that the Church becomes a treasure to Him; and it is because the Church is thus indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and thus made capable of reflecting His image, that He is glorified in it; and this glory, the especial result of the perfecting of the Church (which will be by and by), is the “pearl of great price;” the glory most prized by the Lord. These are the things kept secret from the foundation of the world. The reign of Jesus, as Messiah, the King of the Jews, as King over the whole earth, was a theme continually dwelt upon by the prophets; but it was a secret with God before the foundation of the world, that the Lord Jesus should have a heavenly bride; that a church, His body, should be formed, out of Jew and Gentile alike, to show that new glory above; for even as He has received of His Father, so shall the Church receive (Rev. 2:26, 27).

Here the kingdom of heaven is not the outward external form, such as it appears to the world, but is the position and the estimation by God of those who are said, in verse 38, to be “the children of the kingdom;” not those who are nominally subjects in the kingdom, but are really the children thereof. The Lord is speaking to His disciples alone, enters more deeply into the mysteries of the kingdom; not only gives the reason why the kingdom exists in mystery, but affords room for (without developing) the further and higher thought of the mystery of Christ and the Church. Away from the world and the multitude, none are noticed but the wheat—the children. They are said to be a treasure hid in the field; and for the sake of the treasure—or the heavenly saints—the field, or the world, is bought. The field is not bought for its own sake. It is not here a question of the universal offer of the Savior to the world; not of the declaration of the Lord, that He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance; but it is the elect of God who are taken up, and considered distinct from all others. This treasure was present and distinct from the field to the mind of God, before the field was bought. For its sake alone the man sold all that he had to purchase the field. The treasure in it could be possessed in no other way; or rather the purchasing of the field was the best way, in the wisdom of the man, to possess the treasure hidden therein. God, for the sake of those whom He foreknew, gave His only begotten Son, that by His death the treasure might be secured. The Church was chosen in Him before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1; 4). Why was the Church chosen? It is according to His good pleasure. For the sake of the Church the world was bought. The great original purpose of God was the new creation of the Church; and all other creations are and were subordinate to this. God foreknew that Adam would fall. He foreknew all the dreadful consequences of that fall, the sin, the misery, the wretchedness of mankind. Why then was such a state of things allowed to continue? Why was not the contaminated and polluted world swept away into its original nonentity? Because it was the will of God, “his good pleasure,” from out of this so unpromising material, to gather souls and make His Church—and to make it pure and holy, through and in Christ; that it might be to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He path made us accepted in the beloved.

Here is the secret why the Church is called a treasure; not that it is anything in itself, but because it is to the praise of the glory of His grace. Every member of that Church is originally as vile and worthless as others; but they are washed and sanctified, renewed in mind, separate from the world, called to reflect the image of God, builded together as His habitation, through the Spirit, raised to the brotherhood of Christ, nay, to union with Him, as well as to be the sharers of His throne and kingdom, constituted kings and priests forever to God. And all this is by the exceeding riches of the grace of God; and the Church, composed of purged and sanctified men, is the manifestation of this grace, is the effect of the working of His mighty power to us-ward who believe. How could such grace be shown to us? Because of Christ dead, risen, and glorified. God could have created beings far beyond the capabilities and powers of man, and have established them in their holy state beyond the possibility of sin. He could have endowed them with wisdom, power, and intelligence beyond the power of human conception; and such would have been to the praise and glory of His wisdom and power. But that any should be to the praise of the glory of His grace, it was necessary that infinite love should be manifested to creatures utterly unworthy, yea, deserving of everlasting punishment, and eternal banishment from His presence. How could this be done consistently with the claims of divine justice! God devised the plan. Blood was shed. The Son of God became Son of man, and died to satisfy and establish divine justice, and the way was clear for the exhibition of grace. “Redeemed not with corruptible things,.... but with the precious blood of Christ.” But it is not merely redemption—this the Church shares in common with all other saints, past or future, Jewish or Gentile. The baptism of the Spirit, uniting with a glorious head in heaven, is that which gives the peculiarity to the saint of this dispensation; and upon this baptism, as the means, depends the Church's union with Christ, in the sense of being His body; and it is thus that being brought into the heavenlies, the Church exhibits the wondrous power and riches of divine grace, is the object of the Father's love, for the sake of Christ; is the fruit of the love of the Father for the Son; is the Father's gift to the Son. (John 17:9.) Here, then, is the treasure. No other could so abundantly show forth the riches of His grace; and because the Church does so glorify Christ, the Father loves and gives Christ to be head over all things to it. Not because the Church is anything of itself, but because it is the exhibition of God's grace, it is a treasure to Christ. The cross of Christ laid the foundation, and the baptism of the Holy Ghost is the means, by which the Church becomes the greatest result of redemption. Christ and the Church are one— “We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” The highest glory, the nearest place to the person of Christ, in all heaven's hierarchy, is for the Church. It is by grace Christ's treasure, as He is, in every sense, the Church's treasure.

But if the Church is a treasure hid in the field, only God could discern it. From other scriptures we learn that the manifestation of the Church (i.e., in its perfect state) will not be in this world, or age, or rather, the manifestation will take place in the new age; for this will have closed when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven, taking vengeance, &c., but then the Church will be revealed also (Col. 3:4). The manifestation of the sons of God, the Church, is an event for which all creation, animate and inanimate, are represented as earnestly waiting (Rom. 8:1; 9-23.) But this manifestation of the Church refers to the future glory, and is the term put to this hiding of our life in the passage above cited, viz., Col. 3:4, “Our life is hid with Christ in God,” &c. We hear in our day about an invisible Church, as if it were the will of God and the Church should he hidden now; but there is no scriptural warrant for such a thought. It is a sad and solemn fact that there are many of God's children who walk not as children of the light, and the Church corporately is not known as a distinct and separate body from the world. There may be a few here and there who endeavor so to walk in separation from evil, and to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace; but alas, how few comparatively! But it does not appear from scripture that God designed the Church to occupy such a position, in which it could scarcely be distinguished from the world, but on the contrary, it does appear from scripture that the word “hid” refers to the past. Nowhere do we find the idea of an invisible Church as God's intention and desire. It was set up in broad day, in the face of all the languages assembled in Jerusalem, and in an instant the tongue of the unlearned was loosened, and gave testimony to the grace of God in the various languages to the astonished multitude. Enemies reviled, and said, “These are full of new wine.” There was no invisibility here. “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples if ye love one another.” God designed that unity and love, after Christ's pattern, were to be the evidence to all men that they were his disciples. This is quite inconsistent with invisibility, save as the result of man's sin; for alas! here, as in every other position in which man has been placed, is failure. The Church as a body visible, is ruined; it is broken and split up into sects and parties, and in many cases the bitterest enmity exists between the rivals. Surely this is not what was intended. This cannot be the effect of the presence of the Holy Ghost in the Church, but because that presence has been denied, and human authority has usurped the place of the Spirit. The natural, necessary consequence is, that, till Christ comes, the lusts of the flesh and the power and subtlety of Satan have broken up and forever marred the visible unity of the Church upon the earth. “From whence come wars and fightings among you?” &c. It was the secret purpose of God before the foundation of the world, that from the race of men living in the world, and irrespectively of His governmental distinctions, He would at the proper time form His Church. This purpose was intimated when Christ came, and developed by the Spirit afterward. “On this Rock I will build my Church.” At the day of Pentecost God put his plan into execution. He began to build His spiritual house when the Holy Ghost descended upon the saints (Acts 2; 1-4). For the Church is not merely an assembly of believers, but an assembly formed into one body corporate, by the actual and personal presence of the Holy Ghost, who is just in the same sense present, as the Lord Jesus is now absent. This is the Church. It is evident that such a body could not exist previously, because that Christ had not ascended, and the Comforter could not come till Christ had gone up (John 14, et seq.) It is true, that many things in the old economy typified the Church, or rather, Christ's members, in certain respects; but it is equally true that the Lord revealed His assembly as his purpose, and that Paul was the chosen one to bring it fully out. Eph. 2, Col. 1.

If the above view of the “hid treasure” be scriptural, it follows that a very prevalent idea as to its import must be incorrect and unscriptural, viz., that it signifies the religion of Christ in the soul—the effectual inward working of the Holy Spirit in the individual, and that it avers merely the fact that the communion existing between God and the believer is a thing utterly unknown to the world. Most certainly it is unknown to the world; but this is not what is contained in the parable. Doubtless too we have Christ as our Pattern and Exemplar; and as He gave up all for us, so we have the great principle taught us that we should give up all and everything for Christ; not in the way of quid pro quo, but “we love Him because He first loved us.” But this is not so much the direct teaching of the scripture before us, as it is impressed upon the mind by the Holy Ghost as a result which should be produced in us by the fact that “He sold all that He had and bought the field.”

The treasure, in the word, is not the Christianity of a soul, but the Christian body; not the treasure that the Church possesses in Christ, but the treasure that Christ has in the Church.

Thoughts on the Parables in Matthew 13: 7. The Net

Ver. 47. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net that was cast into the sea and gathered of every kind,” &c. In this last parable the kingdom is again presented as comprehending the whole of Christendom, not as in the parables of the tares, the tree, and the leaven; but as it is in its effects and purpose in the eye of God. We know it is His purpose to gather out of the world a people for Himself, and the means used for this is likened unto a net cast into the sea. The net is evidently the preaching of the cross of Christ—to the Jews a stumbling block, to the Greeks foolishness. The world's religion, Pharisaism, has ever stumbled at the cross of Christ. The world's wisdom and philosophy have ever deemed it folly. But to the simple, humble believer it is the power and wisdom of God. The sea is the symbol of the inhabitants of the earth in a state of tumult and lawlessness. And such is eminently the state of the world. And it is into such a world, into such a sea casting up mire and dirt, that the gospel net has been cast, and fishes of every kind are enclosed. Within the bounds of Christendom, and under the name of Christian, are to be found, not the greatest good only, but the greatest wickedness in the earth. There are real and false disciples of Christ.

What a different view is taken of the kingdom, according as we look at it from the earth, or from the heavenly places!-standing outside with the multitude, or in the house with Jesus. From the former we get only its external features—a great wheat-field, but the cross mingled and spoiled by tares; a great tree, with its vast branches shooting out on every side; and a certain mass of meal with leaven working till the whole was leavened. A system adapting itself to the peculiarities and characteristics of the different nations among whom it is established, as if its propagators would make a perverted use of the apostle's words, “All things to all men.” A system which possesses enough of native energy to give a certain distinctive feature to all who are in it; while yet affording room for the development of all the shades of difference comprised in Catholicism of east or west, in nationalism or dissent. The aim and intent of Satan is to bring such men under the control of a priestly, quasi-spiritual bondage, compared with which no yoke is so heavy and intolerable; and this in utter contravention of God's purpose in establishing His Church in the world. God calls to separation from the world, and the taking up of the cross in practice as well as in principle. His enemy's system pursues union with the world, and, by means of this, promises ease and honor. But it is only when in ''the house,” and our minds under the tuition and guidance of the Holy Spirit, that we see the extreme contrariety between the true position of the saint and that which is assumed by the professing world. The net is cast into the sea, and its purpose is to separate those within it from the mass outside. In the parable of the tares the reason is given why, or how, tares came to be mingled with the wheat. Men slept, and during that time the enemy sowed his tares. Here we have no reason given why the net encloses bad fishes as well as good ones; it is simply the fact—such is the case. The world sees only what unfaithfulness and worldliness have made of it; viz., the Church-world. The TRUTH shows us that the net is God's means for gathering out His own. That may be seen by the multitude; this only by the disciple in the house.

So when the four empires were symbolically presented to the Gentile king, they had their worldly aspect. There was the similitude of a great image, majestic in its proportions, composed of the most costly, durable, and useful of metals: there was in it that which recommended itself to the world, the splendor and richness of gold and silver, the strength and serviceableness of brass and iron. True, there was clay also, but that was down low in the feet and was comparatively overshadowed by the beauty and brightness of the head and breast of gold and silver. Here is the world's estimation of imperial power and successful ambition; and they bow down and worship; but when these same empires are shown in Symbol to the saint, they are characterized by unclean and terror-striking beasts, beasts greedy of blood, ferocious, untameable, and indeed the last one had such preeminence in those qualities, that no animal known to man was able to set forth its character; and so a nondescript monster a terror naturae was held up to the prophet's eye to symbolize the fourth empire. This gives us God's judgment about these empires, and shows us what value His saints should put upon their splendor and power. That which is pleasing to the natural man is an abomination to God.

This parable and that of the tare-field bear this resemblance, that they both present to us the mixed character of the kingdom; but they differ in that the latter brings more prominently to view the kingdom during the continuance of the present age; the former most discloses that which takes place at the end. The one is the final separation and the other the co-existence of the two characters found in the world which owns Christ externally. In the explanation given by our Lord to the disciples, the issue in blessing and misery of the wheat and the tares is made known; but in the parable itself the principle thought is, “let both grow together.” But in the parable of the net, the great thought is seen in the act of the fishermen selecting the good and putting them into vessels, and in rejecting the bad. The fishermen are not represented as being the active agents in punishing the bad: they simply leave them, casting them away. The angels here, as in the parable of the tares, are the executors of God's vengeance. We have not the true saints considered distinct from the mass of professors, as in the “hid treasure” and in “the pearl,” nor is it an external view of the kingdom as presented in those parables spoken outside to the multitude; but a picture of the whole as it appears to God, and as He would have His saints view it, and the means He has adopted in calling out His people from the world. It is the winding up of the present age. The great net which was let down into the sea, when Christ was first proclaimed, is now drawn to the land. The sowing and ripening of the field are at an end, and the sifting time is come. The floor will be thoroughly purged, the wheat gathered into the garner, the chaff burnt with unquenchable fire.

The good are first taken care of, and put in vessels by those fit for that work; after that selection, (how long is not said), the angels do their work. The parable gives only the putting of the good into vessels, nor is this confined to one act, but rather, we apprehend, gives the character of the time (so far as the good are concerned) which will elapse from the first separation to the establishment of the millennial kingdom. And we know that the rapture of the Church will take place before judgment descends upon the wicked. For when the Son of man is revealed in flaming fire, taking vengeance upon them that know not God, the heavenly saints will appear with Him, and, consequently, must have been gathered to Him before (Col. 3). Be the interval then between that rapture and the revelation of the Lord Jesus with these saints in flaming fire, long or short, the two events cannot be at the same moment. The dead saints will be raised and the living saints changed, and both shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air (1 Thess. 4). This is a very different scene from the time when He and His armies shall be revealed to His enemies. It is a great mistake to confound these distinct parts of His coming or presence. The Church of God is ever directed to expect the coming of the Lord Jesus at any moment. His disciples are always to be waiting, always expecting. This is the true position of the Church of God. There is no event given which must precede His coming to receive us in the air. There are many prophecies which must be fulfilled before His and our appearing can take place. We know that the letting thing must be taken away and the lawless one revealed, whom the Lord will destroy with the breath of His mouth, and with the appearing, or shining forth, of His presence (2 Thess. 2). There are signs given which shall usher in the great and terrible day of the Lord. There are times and dates given, days, and months, and years, which must pass before that event. (Vide Daniel and the revelation).

We do not enter into the questions, whether the days be symbolical or natural, whether we can compute and fix the precise date of their commencement or not, &c. We simply say that the giving of any time to elapse previously, or of any sign to precede, is incompatible with the position of waiting for Christ continually. And that this is the true position of the Church of God, has been fully proved in another paper of this periodical (p. 210), and which we need not now enter upon. When the Lord descends in the air to meet His Church, this peculiar phase of the kingdom (which we may call its Church aspect) ceases. It is the kingdom of heaven as a whole which we have here. There are other saints, outside the Church, which have a share in the kingdom and in the first resurrection. The heavenly saints, symbolized by the twenty-four elders, are in heaven before that tremendous drama of the Apocalyptic judgments begins; and, while we see them in heaven, there are saints, Gentiles, as well as Jews, on the earth, passing through great tribulation, whom afterward, yet previous to the great catastrophe, the prophet John sees with white robes (Rev. 6; 7; 14 &c.) But during that terrible time, the kingdom takes again the same character it had before the day of Pentecost (i.e., it is not strictly the Church character). The principles of this time are found in the earlier chapters of the Acts; for, although the Church was formed, yet her peculiar position and privileges were not as yet brought out; the message or preaching of the kingdom, although extending to the Gentile through the blood of a slain and risen Christ, was particularly addressed to Jews, and in the wisdom of God it was necessary that the Jew should entirely reject it before the full development of His amazing grace could take place. It was when the testimony of Jesus on the earth, and also of the Holy Ghost after the Lord's ascension had both been rejected by God's own ancient people, that the super-abounding grace of God to the lost Jew and Gentile indiscriminately, came fully out.

The gathering of the good fish into vessels by the fishermen is, evidently, a distinct act from the separation of the wicked from among the just, which last term is a very common designation of Old Testament saints, and but seldom applied to the saints since Pentecost, except when the Holy Ghost applies Old Testament scripture to them, as for instance, “the just shall live by faith.” But again, the action of the angels differs in character. The fishermen gather the good into vessels, to take care of and preserve them—an act of interest and value. The angels sever the wicked from among the just. It is the contrast of those who sought out the good; these seek out the bad for punishment, and “cast them into the furnace of fire,” —an act of vengeance and wrath. The “just,” then, we think, comprehend more saints than those standing in full Pentecostal privilege; some of them slain, and having a share in the first resurrection, and some, perhaps, who are not slain, but preserved to form the living nucleus of the millennial kingdom. At the very end of the trouble, when antichrist is judged, the angels come forth, and sever the wicked from the just. The honor and glory of the victory is the Lord's; it is His arm which strikes down the usurper. The beast and the false prophet are cast alive into the pit. Then the angels come forth, and go through the length and breadth of the kingdom, and gather out all things that offend. Then will the floor of the kingdom be purged; earthly friendships, sex, and association will be unheeded by these messengers. Two men shall be in the field, and two women at the mill: the one shall be taken and the other left. Whether abroad or at home, the angels shall sever the wicked from the just.

One remark more, in comparing the two parables, (viz., tares, field, and net), which bring before us the end of the age. The former is spoken to the multitude outside, and accordingly it is the doom of the tares which is made prominent in the parable, visible and felt by the world. “Bind the tares in bundles and burn them.” The explanation gives the glory (ver. 43), and is given to the disciples, and the parable gives the care for the good as the prominent thought. The explanation (ver. 49, 50), reveals the doom of the bad.

To sum up, we have in these parables, an epitome of the history of the religious world, from the Lord's first advent to His second, given under two general aspects. There is the gift of salvation by grace to man, and then what man has made of it. There is also what God has done, in spite of the perversity of man, and the termination of the whole, bad and good. The sower goes forth to sow, and a general view of the reception of the truth follows, illustrated by the different nature of the ground into which the seed was cast. Man is looked at here in his individuality and in his responsibility. In the remaining parables the state of things is considered. The kingdom being set up (in mystery), six similitudes follow. We stand at the starting point, and look through the scene right up to the end; having, if we may so say, a bird's-eye view of the whole. Man and the enemy having to do with it, the character of the kingdom soon degenerates; the tares spread, and give character to the field. The crop is spoiled, though the Son of man had sown! But though the tares have ruined the work of God, the wheat are there also. These two co-exist until the end, when the great separation takes place. In the parables of the tree and the leaven, the evil is developed; in the hid treasure and the pearl, the accomplishment of God's purpose appears, notwithstanding the baneful influence of Satan. The tree (earthly exaltation) precedes the leaven of doctrine, and this spreads over the permitted space. But God does not forego His design. The treasure is found and secured. All is given up for the pearl, which shows forth His grace and love, and He is glorified.

Here are two threads of history, in a sense parallel to each other, and probably, also, successive; the one giving the eternal form of the kingdom, and the other the development of the purpose of God. The last parable, the net, brings out conspicuously the time of the end.

We may arrange them in the following order:-

I. Introductory parable.

A sower went forth to sow—the new work by Christ, when rejected as Messiah by the Jews; man before us tested by the seed of the word, and responsible for the reception of the truth.

II. Parable of the wheat and the tares.

The kingdom from first to last. Men careless, and so evil introduced where Christ's name is named, and no remedy but judgment by and by.

III. The application of the two things, the wheat and the tares, in four other parables, two showing the evil, and two the good:-

The Evil.

1. The great tree, or the ecclesiastico-secular body, which man had made of Christianity; and 2. The leaven showing the spread of nominal Christian doctrine over a given mass.

The Good.

1. The treasure, which Jesus finds, and really has made in His people; and

2. The pearl, or His people viewed not only as severally precious, but as one precious jewel.

IV. The termination of the whole in the Net.

The two parties in the kingdom are seen together again, but only to be forever separated, when the end of the age comes, and judgment falls upon the wicked. The history of Christendom is over; the millennial kingdom begins. “Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”

R. B.

Perfection: Fragment

Perfection—When it is said, “Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect,” (Matt. 5:48.), Jesus Himself explains this passage by what precedes. This perfection consists in acting according to love and not according to the law of retaliation which says, “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” It is the acting towards men according to the principle of God acting towards us according to the grace of our heavenly Father. There is no question here as to the root of sin in our nature.

This word perfection is used in connection with the three great revelations of God. He made Himself known to Abraham as the Almighty, to the Jews as the Eternal, and to Christians as Father. God said to Abraham, “I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect:” thus signifying that he ought to walk before God, trusting continually in His power as Almighty. Abraham did not do this—he failed in this respect, for he spoke falsehood (Gen. 20:2), just because he was not trusting in the almighty power of God. The question is not as to sin in Abraham's fallen nature, but of acting in full confidence in God's omnipotence. In fact, Abraham had still sin, and he fell.

It was said to the Israelites, “Thou shalt be perfect with Jehovah thy God (Deut. 18:13). The matter in hand here was their not imitating the abominations of the Canaanites in their idolatries; but there was no question of the state of purification from all sin, of the heart of one Israelite or another. The contrary is so true that in the same book (Deut. 29:4) Moses says to them, “Yet the Lord hath not given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear unto this day.”

Thirdly, it is said (Matt. 5:48), “Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” We at once observe a difference in the expressions. It is not said, Be perfect “before me,” or “with thy God,” as was said to Abraham and to the Israelites, because the name of Father reveals to us the fullness of grace. According to this sweet name they were already children, accepted is Christ as Christ is accepted of the Father. They were already made accepted in the Beloved; righteous before God as Christ is righteous; loved as Jesus is loved. Now it is not said, Present to God a character of perfection, such that you should be accepted of Him through this means, and that you should be well-pleasing to Him; but you are the children of your heavenly Father—therefore display His character to the world. “For he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” He acts according to His grace, and not according to the law: you saved sinners, you are and ought to be witnesses of it. The publicans love those who love them, but your heavenly Father loves His enemies. Act according to this rule, and be perfect even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. It is not said, Be perfect before Him, or with Him, as if you were without sin, but like Him, act in love towards your enemies.

There is no question here as to whether sin is or is not in the flesh, but of the principle which ought to direct the conduct of God's children, in contrast with the principle of the law or of natural justice. But if to be perfect as my heavenly Father is to be applied to the absence of the sin of my nature, if it means that I resemble Him perfectly in this respect, seeing that perfection, according to those who hold that doctrine, still leaves things which expose us to eternal damnation, the same thing would be true of the divine perfection—an idea which, of course, would be the grossest impiety and absurdity.

Philippians 3:11: Answer

Phil. 3:11. Is not the apostle to be understood here as longing to know more of the power of the life which he already had in Christ, since resurrection (as commonly understood) in no sense depends upon attainment? Will the editor kindly give his thoughts on the passage in connection with the preceding and following context? “Beta.”

Paul is presenting us in the context with true Christian experience, of which resurrection from the dead by the presence of God is the goal. Verse 11 does not make that resurrection dependent on our efforts, but shows that it was so blessed an end to the heart of the apostle that he did not mind what the pathway (“if by any means”) might be which lay between; yea, rather, he desired and valued the fellowship of Christ's sufferings, instead of seeking some easy road. “Attain” here simply implies that one had not as yet reached the prize in view.”

A Few Remarks on Prayer and Praise: Part 1

Titus 2:7, 8, “In all things showing thyself a pattern of good works: in doctrine (showing) uncorruptness, gravity, SOUND SPEECH that cannot be condemned, that he that is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of you. We read, also of “wholesome words” (1 Tim. 6:3); of the form of sound words” (2 Tim. 1:13); of “sound doctrine” (Titus 1:9; see also 1 Tim. 1:10; 2 Tim. 4:3); “of things-which become sound doctrine” (Titus 2:1); of “being sound in the faith” (Titus 1:13, and 2:2) —as things which are greatly to be sought after by the Christian.

I would desire to act under a sense of the weight of these instructions whenever I attempt to communicate thoughts derived from God's written word; and I would also study that word as remembering that the present and future correction of oneself is far more important than the seeing where either oneself has in time past been wrong, or where others around us may be so still.

There is great accuracy in the Holy Spirit's use of words—though it be accuracy without labored effort; for He, who is God, does nothing save perfectly. His use of words is perfect; it must be so—for He is God. When therefore any habitual difference in His use of words exists, we may be sure that some distinction is intended by Him to be marked.

Now, in the New Testament there is such a difference between the gospels and the rest of the book, as to the way in which the Savior is commonly spoken of in the terms used to designate Him.

In the gospels He is commonly named as “Jesus;” in the rest of the book generally, with some title of honor superadded; for instance, as, “the Lord,” — “the Lord Jesus Christ,” — “Jesus the Christ,” — “the Christ,” —and He is comparatively rarely named merely as “Jesus.” This is all quite natural and consistent. He is but one; but when He is presented, as in humiliation, in the days of His association with the children of men, then He is spoken of as the Son of man. When, earth-rejected, He has been received up into glory, it is both natural and consistent that He should also be spoken of as accordingly, and that some title or other of glory should be connected with His name when He is mentioned. No one can carefully read through the gospels, and then through the Acts and the Epistles, and not see the difference; and how, also, the mention of a title is in the Gospels the exception, (though a reason may generally be seen in the context for the exception), and, on the other hand, in the Acts, together with the Epistles, the omission of all title is the exception; and the exception is generally in this case also fraught with meaning and reason. If I said that the name of “Jesus” occurred in the Gospels about 605 times without any title, and about 14 times with a title, and in the Acts, &c., about 30 times without one, and about 300 times with a title, I should not be far wrong.

To neglect so marked a contrast, and to speak of Him now, that He is exalted, in the language in which the Spirit spoke of Him, when He was in humiliation, would be a mistake, and mark, at all events, defectiveness of instruction in him that did it.

The following may serve as illustrations of the exceptions in the first case—

Matt. 1:1. The book of the generation of Jesus Christ.

16. Of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

18. Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise.

16:20. Tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ. 27:17. Barabbas, or Jesus which is called Christ. (In Pilate's mouth).

37. This is Jesus the king of the Jews. (In Pilate's mouth.)

Mark 1:1. The gospel of Jesus Christ.

5:7. Jesus; Son of the most high God? (In the mouth of one that had an unclean spirit.)

Luke 24:3. Found not the body of the Lord Jesus.

John 1:17. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

11:21. Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou, &e.

17:3. And Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.

19. Jesus of Nazareth the king of the Jews. (From Pilate, but probably under divine ruling.)

31. Believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

They are all the exceptions in the first case, which I know of.

The meaning of the name of “Jesus” is deep— “Jehovah a Savior,” and faith lays hold of those glories as being His: personally, JEHOVAH, —in action, the Savior. Yet the name (as we see in Acts 7:45, and Heb. 4:8) was a name not uncommon among the Jews, but rather one of their national ones “Joshua.”

Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, the One anointed of God, the Messiah, the root and offspring of David, the king of Israel, the seed of Abraham, in whom, and in whom alone, all the promises given to the patriarchs were secure. He came as such for the earth. But He had and was far more than these names presented. He had titles for heavenly glory, and was and is personally Jehovah and God. He had made the world, upheld it, and was to redeem it and a people for God—sons and daughters for the heavens, and a people for the earth—and to put down Satan and those that adhere to him; and therefore, He came not at first in such a form, and with such a manifestation as would have secured to Himself certain glories at once, but He came meek and lowly, in order to make good God's claims over the people. And the form in which He came was such as left the people free to show whether they desired God and His glory, or an evil world and their own ways. In the very act in which full iniquity of Israel and the Gentiles was proved, the counsel of God provided a ransom for a man and the blood of atonement.

But if the King, meek and lowly, had passed through Israel's land, and after tarrying there a little while, had been rudely thrust out of it, this same blessed One must needs be testified of in the value of His atoning blood—He sitting in patience at the right hand of God.

He Himself gone on high—the testimony of that God of heaven's estimate of Him (as set in contrast with man's) was to be preached, with the Holy Ghost sent down from Him. And this faith's recognition of God's estimate of Him in heaven is now salvation, and the walking therein is the power of Christian life. Jesus of Nazareth, the virgin's son—that very Jesus who had taught in Jerusalem, &c. (Acts 1:1; 2:22, whose mother was Mary (Acts 1:14); who had been betrayed (verse 16); whom the Jews had “taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain,” —that “Jesus” had been raised up from the dead (2:32), and, taken up into heaven (1:11), had there been owned as “Lord and Christ” (2:36).

If God “raised Him from the dead, and gave Him glory, that our faith and hope might be in God” (1 Peter 1:21), it is clear that the recognition of the glory in which He is, and the glories which belong to Him, are now of the utmost importance; still, He whom God has raised and glorified is the very one whom man rejected—the same Jesus. This will account for the list of the exceptional passages in the Acts, Epistles, and Revelation (in which He is named as “Jesus” without any title being added), being small in comparison with that in which His titles are named.

I have already noted some of them (as Acts 1:1, 11, 14, 16; 2:22, 32, 36), and I may notice a few more of them in detail, ere closing; but at present I would look, at some of the passages which speak of Him in glory, and endeavor to trace, however briefly, some of His actings toward us, and of our actings in faith towards Him.

Acts 1:24, 25. “And they prayed, and said, Thou Lord, which knowest the hearts of all (men), show whether of these two thou hast chosen, that he may take part of this ministry and apostleship, from which Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own place.”

Again 2:21. “And it shall come to pass (that) whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Again, verse 32. “This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we are all witnesses. Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear. For David is not ascended into the heavens: but he saith himself, The Lord (Jehovah) said unto my Lord, sit thou on my right hand until I make thy foes thy footstool. Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus whom ye have crucified both Lord and Christ,” I may observe here that, the Greek word κύριος represents two Hebrew words; 1St, Jehovah, which is one of the most sacred names of the Jewish scriptures—a name never given save to Him who is personally God in the highest; 2ndly, Adon, master, Lord, proprietor. The expression, “hath made,” proves that the word κύριος, lord, here means master; and the contrast is between the past humiliation and the present glory of Jesus. Crucified by the Jews on earth, Jehovah hath made Him universal master and Christ. In the authorized version the translators rendered the Hebrew word Jehovah by LORD in the Old Testament, and the word (master, Adon,) they rendered Lord. Jehovah, or Lord, is a sacred name, never, as I have said, applied, save to the most high Himself. To talk of making any one Jehovah would be nonsense. The term is justly applied to the Lord Jesus (Isa. 6:1, compared with John 12:41). Read the context, John 12:20-41; and this may be seen also in Zech. 11:12, 13, “And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prized at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord.” Here Jehovah, or Jesus, was prized at thirty pieces of silver (Matt. 26:15). So again, chap, 13:7: “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones.” This likewise was the blessed Lord (Matt. 26:31). To none from among men could the name of Jehovah be applied save to Jesus—He alone is so—in Him, too, dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. But “Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord” (1 Peter 3:6).

(To be continued.)

A Few Remarks on Prayer and Praise: Part 2

Personal and essential glory (as of Jehovah), and official glory (as of Lordship conferred), however high, are very distinct things.

It is of all-importance ever to remember the personal glory found in Him who, as a servant, became obedient unto death, the death of the cross; and therefore was highly exalted, and had a name given to Him above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth; “and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Universal lordship belongs to the faithful servant—the Father will force all to bow before Him, one way or the other. But He before whom all must bow is not only the Nazarene, made ruler over all, but He is personally Son of God in the Highest. No service, no position, however low they might be, could ever undo the deep personal glory of the Son of God—of Him who, humble Himself as He might, was still ever essentially Jehovah.

And it should be noticed how, in connection with God's display of redemption, the practical recognition of the Lord Jesus by the soul is salvation—not to recognize it is to be in a lost estate.

2 Cor. 4; 3-6 “But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: in whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” This gives God's display of Himself in redemption... “the light of the glorious gospel of [the] Christ, who is the image of God;.... the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

Its shining into a heart is by divine power and is salvation. But the salvation, how is that marked by the actings of the individual? merely by light? No, by a great practical change also, as a result of the light. Such call upon the name of the Lord; such believe in the Lord. “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Rom. 10:13, 9). “No man can call Jesus Lord but by the Holy Ghost” (1 Cor. 12:3). Jehovah of Hosts, God the Son, who humbled Himself, and as Son of man died on the cross, is now, as Son of man, glorified on the throne of the Father, and in the majesty of the Highest in heaven. The soul's being apart from fellowship with Him is its perdition, the soul's being brought into subjection to Him is its salvation.

I do not now speak of acts of prayer or praise to Him, but of the posture of a soul toward Him. Acts of prayer and praise may, as we shall see, be modified by other things; but the right position, the right condition, the right dependence and bearing of a soul toward Himself can never be but one. A redeemed soul now knows Him as Jesus the Christ, as Jehovah, as the only-begotten Son, and knows Him so always. Obedience, entire personal surrender to Him (of all that we have and all that we are), to Him through whom divine glory has shined forth, and by whom it is to be established in redemption, is our part. If a first ray of light shining in bids me call upon Him that I may be saved— “Behold he prayeth,” “Who art thou, Lord?” “What wilt thou have me to do?” (Acts 9:5, 6,) were Saul's first two addresses; if a disciple in severe trial find His presence in sympathy, then again he prays as did Stephen, “calling upon and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit;” and again, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge” (Acts 7:59, 60.)

These things show the devotional dependent bearing toward the Lord, of souls divinely taught. So does another truth. The baptizing in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Matt. 28; 19,) is the same as the baptizing “in the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 2:38, &c.) So at least I judge. The glory of the display of God as Jehovah was one name; the glory of the display of God as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost was another name; but this name was made in and by Jesus Christ, earth rejected and heaven-honored. To believe in Christ, (John 14; 1,) to be baptized in His name, to receive remission of sins and the Holy Ghost from Him, all mark a specialty of position in man, as well as a specialty of glory in Him Faith makes men own Jesus of Nazareth as Son of God and as Jehovah—Lord of all.

I have adverted to Stephen's and to Paul's experience as similar conduct, but in one respect they are contrasted. Stephen's saw Jesus [that is the Nazarene who had been known by that name] standing on the right hand of God— “the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.” He address's Him as “Lord Jesus” and as “Lord.” Son of man, the Lord, Jehovah, were revealed to him To Paul it was Jehovah, Jesus, the Lord, Son of God; and that “he is the Son of God” was first preached by Paul (Acts 9:20).

I again refer to Stephen's prayer to the Lord Jesus (in Acts 7:59, 60), to Paul's addresses in prayer to the Lord Jesus (in 9:5, 6), and I refer also to the burst of praise from John, “And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty” (Rev. 1:5-8); and to the declaration (chap. 12:17), “The Spirit and the bride say, Come;” and to the closing cry (verse 20), “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” This is the continuous cry of every soul that is converted, and has light from the beginning of its course to the end; and not only so, but of the whole chain of Christians, from the hour Christ went on high until the hour of His corning again. Yes! this cry to Him, “even so, come, Lord, Jesus,” is faith's voice, heard though the whole wilderness course But I refer to these passages (and I might add other similar ones) that it may be seen that I recognize plainly the passages in scripture for the practice of the faithful making addresses, both in prayer and in praise, to the Lord Jesus.

God has given to us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ; the recognition, by faith, of Him puts us into the position of calling on Him, becoming subject to Him, and discovering in Him—the Lord Jesus—not only Jehovah and Son of God, the Lord of all, but the very name of the Father, and the power of the Spirit as the Holy Ghost the Comforter. A life begins in the wilderness, its every acting owns Him to be thus the object of our worship; and when the wilderness is past, we shall hi the glory worship God and the Lamb I thought it well—due to the Lord Jesus, and through mercy due to oneself—to put these remarks forward, before returning to take up a matter previously adverted to, where I said that the actings in prayer and praise toward the Lord Jesus might be modified by other things—though the soul's posture and position toward Him never varied as to its being one of worship, subjection and dependence. Eternal life, the knowledge of the possessing it, and the modes of its acting are distinct. Every member of the household of faith must have had life, though life and immortality were only brought to light by the gospel—not by the law. Now the mode of action depends upon the position in which Christ is looked at at any given time, and what, when He has placed and holds us in that position, we have to render. Is He teacher in Israel? There are His twelve apostles and His seventy teachers through grace associated with Him. Is He risen from the dead, and in Jerusalem is it declared that He has been proclaimed Lord and Christ on heaven's high throne? The Holy Ghost has come down, and there are the twelve witnesses of the resurrection, and there is the company in their fellowship. Has He set Himself for a testimony among the uncircumcision and the Gentiles to the uttermost parts of the earth? Paul and his yokefellow have their labor, and they that are scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word. When looked at in this connection, not prayer and praise, but labor, had to be rendered: not, of course, that they ceased to recognize Him in His personal and essential glory, or to know the sweetness of their relation to, and connection with, Him as being such.

Hereafter, even in glory, when the Church shall be the tabernacle of God, when the time for glory and for unmingled joy shall be come—when prayer shall cease together with the want and need and the feebleness that now provoke it, when praise and glory shall be unhindered—still, even then, as servants, we shall serve Him as much as we shall worship Him as worshippers.

But there is another thing I must speak of as in another way modifying prayer and praise as directly addressed to the Lord Jesus. Personally Son of God, essentially Jehovah, He in grace holds a position and the place of being the medium through which all flows out from God, even the Father, through whom alone there is any access to God. If not personally God the Son, if not essentially Jehovah, He could not be the revealer of God and of the Father—that is clear. But being thus able to do so, and through His work as Redeemer able also to present that light in a way suited to man as a sinner, He, in grace, holds this position of being the medium through whom what has to shine forth—of life, light, and love—may shine forth—and through whom the way of return for that which the revelation, applied in power by the Holy Ghost to us, creates in us, may be secured and maintained. Love divine has formed a system for associating God and us together: the Lord Jesus in that system is the medium, as the Holy Ghost is the power. Nothing can proclaim the personal and essential glory of the Son and of the Spirit more than this—nothing ought to humble our hearts more thoroughly than the truths:-1St, that grace has brought us into a system with every part of which God in the highest is associated and every part of which is associated with Him; and 2ndly, that this might be so, this was immediately through the Son of God—Jehovah—the Redeemer and Savior, and by the power of the Holy Ghost.

It in no wise derogates from the personal glory of the Son, as God and as Jehovah, that having come forth from God to make known the mercy and compassion of God, He should jealously direct the affections and the thoughts of the souls He saves to the God and Father from whom He came forth, to whom He leads back those whom He saves. It does tell of living grace still active in Him who thus mediates.

If any one looks at the more formal prayers and praises of Paul, &c., in the New Testament, they are generally and habitually addressed to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; as for instance, the prayers in Eph. 1 and 3 &c. and the doxologies, Rom. 11:25-27; Jude 25, &c. &c. So again, if the instances in which the various Greek words which are rendered in English, thanks, worship, pray, prayer, praise, &c., are looked at in such a book as the Englishman's Greek Concordance, the same is the general rule. All our springs are in God, though the water gushes from the Rock that was smitten.

The double use of Κύπιος Lord, at times for Jehovah, and at times for lord or universal master, leads a simple mind into no error; because He who is the universal master, the lord, in honor and office, is essentially Jehovah, and personally God. It is important to notice it, however, in order that the simple mind may both perceive the double glory in Him, and may be able to answer the corrupt and perplexed reasoning of minds unlearned and unstable in the truth.

Heathen idolaters have “gods many and lords many” —a god perchance for every virtue and for every vice too; and a lord for every separate place. To the Christian there is none other God but one. For though there be that are called gods whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many and lords many,) but to us there is but one God the Father, of whom are all things, and we in Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by Him (1 Cor. 8:4-6).

That there is but one God, and that worship may be offered to God alone, was taught among the Jews as concerning Jehovah. But to them the glory of the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost was not known. The Lord Jesus claimed to be God (John 5 and 8:53-58; 10:36), and as such never repudiated worship when offered to Him in the days of His humiliation (Matt. 8:2; 9:18; 18:26:28, 18; John 11:38, &c). See in contrast with this Peter, Acts 10:26; the angel, Rev. 22:9, &c.

Because in the revelation of the heavenly bearing of the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, it appears that the Son officially holds in heaven the place of Lord of all, and the Holy Ghost fulfills services in us down here—am I to deny that the Son or that the Spirit is God? Most surely not; but rather am I, with adoring heart to own the grace, which, for the sake of revealing what we need to know, planned and has executed a work which needed that the Son of God and the Spirit of God should stoop to, and sustain, offices, without which it had been impossible that we could have known and enjoyed the glory of God even the Father.

If any one could say, “I know not what it is to address the Lord Jesus in prayer, in praise,” he would dishonor his own self. He is not of the company of Stephen, Paul, John, the faithful, nor of the number of those that know the true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. On the other hand, not to know, not to acknowledge, not to act upon the grace which leads the Lord Jesus to retain and to use the mediate place for us, is something very like alas! dishonoring His highest honor and richest fullest grace.

As to the rest of the passages in which, after the resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ, He is spoken of simply as Jesus:

Notice, 1St,

Rev. 22:16. I, Jesus, have sent mine angel to testify to you these things in the churches.”

20:4. The souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus.

19:10. I am fellow-servant of thee and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus: worship God: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.

17:6. The woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.

14:12. The faith of Jesus.

These five passages are very worthy of consideration in the book of “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which gave God unto him to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass.”

1 John 5:1, 5. Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God (Compare 2: 12). Who is he that overcometh the world but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God (Compare 4:15).

2 Peter 1:2. The knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

Heb. 13:12. Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood suffered without the gate.

12:24. To Jesus the mediator.

2. Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.

See also 10:19, the blood of Jesus, 7:22; 6:20; 4:14; 2:9.

1 Thess. 4:14. If we believe that Jesus died, them also which sleep in Jesus, &c.

1:10. Whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus.

Phil. 2:10. That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow.

Eph. 4:21, As the truth is in Jesus.

2 Cor. 11:4. He that cometh preacheth another Jesus.

4:14. Shall raise us up by Jesus.

11. Delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.

10. That the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.

1 Cor. 12:3. No man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.

Rom. 8:11. The Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead.

3:26. The justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.

Acts 28:23. Persuading them concerning Jesus.

26:9, 15. Contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest (Compare 22:8, 9:5).

25:19. And of one Jesus, which was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive.

19:13, 15. We adjure you by Jesus, whom Paul preacheth.... And the evil spirit answered and said, Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are ye?

18:5, 28. That Jesus was the Christ.

17:18. He preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection (verse 7, another king, one Jesus).

3. This Jesus, whom I preach unto you is Christ.

33, (32). In that he hath raised up Jesus again.

23. A Savior, Jesus.

10:38. God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power.

9:27. Boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus.

Acts 9:17. Brother Saul, the Lord (even) Jesus.

8:35. Philip... preached unto him Jesus.

7:55. Stephen saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God.

See also 6:14; 5:40, 30; 4:30, 27, 18, 13; 3:26.

The simple perusal of these passages as the only exceptions after the resurrection and ascension in which He is spoken of simply as Jesus, and no title, (as Lord, the Christ, &c.,) immediately added, may suffice for most. They are not above thirty at the very outside, even if we accept the many I have inserted in the list which have no title immediately annexed, though one be in the immediate context, and are the exceptions to a rule which is sustained by upwards of 300 examples at least. Some of these exceptions are very interesting, however, when the reason for the usage is weighed. Jesus is a name the sweetness and power of which endures forever.

The subject is too boundless a one for such an article as this; but for the present I must close, feebly and faintly as I have traced it.

Ln.

The Premillennial Advent: 1. The Hope of Christ's Coming Again and Its Relation to the Question of Time

The battlefield is somewhat changed. The champion of post-millennialism proclaims the second advent to be “THE VERY POLESTAR OF THE CHURCH.” “That it is so held forth in the New Testament is beyond dispute. Let any one do himself the justice to collect and arrange the evidence on the subject, and he will be surprised—if the study be new to him—at once at the copiousness, the variety and the conclusiveness of it,” (Brown, p. 15.) “'Behold, I come quickly, and my reward is with me'; is a sound dear to all that love His name. They 'love His appearing' because they love Himself. To put anything in the place of it is not good. Nor will it succeed; for those who preach Him bringing His reward with Him will prevail, as indeed they ought. Nor is it in regard to the personal appearing of the Savior that only premillennialists will and ought to prevail against all who keep it out of sight. There is a range of truth connected with it, which necessarily sinks out of its scriptural position and influence, whenever the coming of Christ is put out of its due place. I refer to the RESURRECTION as a co-ordinate object of the Church's hope, and to all the truths which circle around it, in which there is a power to stir and to elevate, which nothing else, substituted for it, can ever possess. The resurrection-life of the Head, as now animating all his members, and at length quickening them from the tomb, to be forever with Him; these, and such like, are truth in the presentation of which premillenialists are cast in the mold of Scripture, from which it is as vain as it were undesirable to dislodge them.” (Brown, p. 455.)

For these and similar admissions we are thankful, and we are confident that they will not stop there. Our adversaries had long treated Christ's coming unworthily. They confounded it with the mission of the Holy Ghost, with the destruction of Jerusalem, with the departure of the spirit at death, with the judgment of the dead before the great white throne. They are now compelled to own that “Premillennialists have done the Church a real service, by calling attention to the place which the second advent holds in the word of God and the scheme of divine truth.”

More than this: the immense practical importance of the question is frankly avowed. It was passing strange and most trying to hear men of God, not combating Pre-millennialism because of a supposed lack of Scriptural proof, but neglecting it as a mere secondary, trivial notion, even if true. Such sentiments are deplorable: better to be “cold” than thus “lukewarm.” Here, again, Dr. Brown confesses the untenable ground of such of his partisans. “Some may think it of small consequence whether this system be true or false; but no one who intelligently surveys its nature and bearings can be of that opinion. Premillennialism is no barren speculation, useless though true, and innocuous though false. It is a school of Scripture interpretation; it impinges upon and affects some of the most commanding points of the Christian faith; and when suffered to work its unimpeded way, it stops not till it has pervaded with its own genius the entire system of one's theology, and the whole tone of his spiritual character, constructing, I had almost said, a world of its own; so that, holding the same faith, and cherishing the same fundamental hopes as other Christians, he yet sees things through a medium of his own, and finds everything instinct with the life which this doctrine has generated within him.” (p. 8.) This witness is true. Evidence may be asked and weighed before the Lord; but the incalculable moment of the doctrine ought to be immediately and universally felt.

An event which at once and definitively disposes of the saints who have slept in Jesus, or who may be then alive—an event which subsequently deals with all mankind, Jew or Gentile, and even with the tempting as well as accusing power of Satan—an event which brings the long-groaning creation out from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of glory, must obviously be one of the most solemn and impressive transactions which the world can behold, or the mind contemplate. To say, then, that it can be an immaterial consideration, really proves that those who so speak have never thought seriously about the matter.

It is also, perhaps, worthy of note, that in speaking of prejudice for and against premillennialism, our opponent puts in the first class of those ready to embrace it almost immediately—would the reader believe, who? The curious and marvel loving? the materializing? No, but “souls that burn with love to Christ, who, with the mother of Sisera, cry through the lattice 'Why is his chariot so long in coming? why tarry the wheels of his chariot?' and with the spouse, 'make haste, my Beloved, and be thou like to a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of spices.’” It is indeed singular that a state of heart so healthful, and so according to the evident desire of the Lord, should predispose in favor of a scheme at variance with the word of God, crude in its principles, defective as a system, and perilous in its results. (p. 454) Nearly as strange, considering his own views, is Dr. Brown's acknowledgment of the anti-premillennial tendencies, which require to be guarded against. “Under the influence of such tendencies, the inspired text, as such, presents no rich and exhaustless field of prayerful and delighted investigation; exegetical inquiries and discoveries are an uncongenial element; and whatever Scripture intimations, regarding the future destinies of the Church and of the world, involve events out of the usual range of human occurrences, or exceeding the anticipations of enlightened Christian sagacity, are almost instinctively overlooked or softened down. Such minds turn away from premillennialism.” (p. 10.) Undoubtedly true, but surely unaccountable, if as Dr. B. thinks, premillennialism be false—unaccountable, that the vigorous and spiritual, who burn with love to Christ, should be ready to embrace the doctrine, while the meager and sapless souls who search little into and expect less from God's word, “have hardly patience to listen to it.” Let the dispassionate judge.

The Premillennial Advent: 2. The Hope of Christ's Coming Again and Its Relation to the Question of Time

(1. Christ's Second Coming; Will it be Pre-millennial? By the Rev. P. David Brown, D.D., St. James’s Free Church, Glasgow. Fourth Edition. Edinburgh: Johnstone and Hunter 1876

2. Outlines of Unfulfilled Prophecy: being an inquiry into the Scripture testimony respecting the “good things to come.” By the Rev. T. R. Birks, M. A. Rector of Kelshall. Seeleys 1854.

3. Simples Essais sur des sujets prophetiques, Par W. Trotter Tomes 1. 11. Paris Grassart 1855-56)

The grand question begins in Chapter 2 is habitual waiting for Christ compatible with the revelation of a millennium which must necessarily intervene first? Neither Dr. Brown nor ourselves attach any particular moment to the precise period of 1,000 years, though we believe, as he does, that there are good grounds for taking it definitely and literally. But when he says that no one is to suppose he expects the beginning and end of this period to be discernible without a doubt on any mind, one can only lament the effects of a false system. A reign of Christ and his saints, with a restraint on Satan's presence and seductions, preceded by the awful end of the Beast and the false Prophet, with the destruction of their adherents, and followed by the “little season,” during which Satan, let loose once more, shall marshal! for his last battle the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth—such a time one might expect to be of all others the most strongly defined in the history of this world, as it is characterized in the Bible by features which distinguish it in the clearest way from all preceding ales, and front the eternal state which is to succeed. If it were true, therefore, that past scripture dates follow Dr. B.'s law, (that is, the law of doubt and uncertainty as to their beginning and end,) it would not follow as to the millennium, because it is an unprecedented epoch. But we must be excused if we pronounce the alleged “law” to be a delusion, and the statement, that it is “the law of all scripture dates in this respect,” to be as unfounded in fact, as it is unsound in principle. The Seventy weeks of Daniel, and the 1260 days of anti-Christian rule, are the only instances which Dr. B. adduces—those, doubtless, which h judged most in point. But he has no right to assume that uncertainly overhangs the seventy weeks: if the existence of controversy proves that, all certainty is gone as to God's election, sovereignty, and faithfulness in keeping his own; for these truths, however clearly revealed, a; e keenly and constantly disputed by many true Christians. Yet Dr. B. would never allow the doubts of a large portion of Christendom to unsettle the truth in his own soul; much less would he affirm that these matters were intentionally shrouded in obscurity. 11: he, in spite of controversy has a fixed and clear judgment as to the five points of Calvinism, he must not be surprised if others do not share his hesitation as to Dan. 9 or Rev. 11. Many thousands of God's people in our day have as much certainty touching these prophetic periods as he has touching any truths which have been debated in the church. The millennial period has signatures more peculiar and prominent that any past age, and therefore ought to be pre-eminently unambiguous. As to the picture which Dr. B. draws of its gradual introduction, and especially of its waning glory at the close, as if either or both could be dubious, it has but at most a shadowy support from the Word of God. There is no clearly recorded decay till after that day is over; then Satan is let loose, and this is the signal and the means of the apostasy that ensues.

Whoever examines the Lord's discourse in Luke 12 and kindred Scriptures with a simple mind, can scarcely escape the conclusion that, besides giving the disciples a personal and a heavenly object of hope, he insists much upon their so waiting that, when he comes and knocks, they may open to him immediately. “Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when he cometh shall find watching.”

Now the Lord himself founds the need of thus watching upon the fact, that he was coming in an hour when they thought not; and it will be shown that no after-communications of the Holy Ghost interfere with this habitual expectancy of the Lord. The Epistles confirm the saints in looking for him; and this, for aught they knew to the contrary, as their proximate hope. Hence the Apostle in his first Epistle to the Thessalonians says, “We that are alive and remain.” The Spirit gave them no scriptural intimations which could falsify the looking for Jesus, even in apostolic times, much less since.

Doubtless to the Old Testament saints, yea even to Daniel, much was sealed “to the time of the end,” when the wise should understand. To the New Testament saints, on the contrary, all Scripture is open, and John is told not to seal the sayings even of its most mysterious book, and including of course all the prophetic times whether days or years. But so far from hinting that the attitude was changed, the last chapter of the Revelation more than any other in the book supposes the Christian and the church in constant waiting, without any known obstacle to the Lord's return. Were this the mere hope of unintelligent love, we might hear the bride saying, Come; but “THE SPIRIT and the bride say, Come.” It is longing hope of love inspired and maintained by the full intelligence and power of the Holy Ghost, and not the mere sentimentalism of anon seeming long, and anon short, such as Dr. B. describes.

It is fully conceded, that the knowledge of the premillennial advent, and this holy bridal waiting for Christ, are two distinct things. There are those who have the correct theory, and yet know little or nothing of that blessed hope as the expression of their hearts. There are those whose spiritual instincts are sound, in spite of views about our Lord's return more or less erroneous. It has yet to be proved that Rollock and Rutherford shared the scheme adopted by Dr. Brown, as Wodrow did in substance. If they did, all that could be deduced fairly is that, where the heart is in the main true to Christ and fresh in his love, mistakes, serious though they may be in themselves, cannot stifle, but may hinder and obscure, what is of God. Nor is anything more common than language which goes beyond the narrowness of a wrong system. Who has not known the most rigid super-lapsarian sometimes overflowing with love and desire after the lost Who has not heard the lowest Arminian now and then owning the full and sovereign grace of God that saved him It is not more surprising if spiritual men occasionally anticipate the coming of Christ, though doctrinally putting it off for at least 1000 years. It may be an inconsistency, but it is a happy one, and quite useless to Dr. B. It proves simply that Scripture often asserts its supremacy in defiance of systems, where the heart is at all subject to scriptural language and thought.

Dr. Brown puts together Matt. 25:5, and Heb. 10:37, as if they indicated an oscillation of the heart between two very different and seemingly opposite views of the interval between its own day and the day of Christ's appealing. It might have struck him as remarkable, however, that the “tarrying” is not spoken of in the later statement, where one could understand, on his principles, the tried and persecuted crying out, “But thou, O Lord, how long?” Now, the reverse is the fact. It is the parable of the virgins which discloses the tarrying of the bridegroom, and most certainly this revelation did not hinder the apostles, after the Pentecostal Spirit was given, and fuller light imparted, from increasingly expecting the Lord. It is the apostle Paul, towards the close of his career, who comforts the Hebrew believers with the assurance that yet a very little while and the Coming One will come, and will not tarry. “The very little while” in the one corresponds with the tarrying of the bridegroom in the other; that being over, he will come and “will not tarry.” Both are perfectly harmonious. At the time the Epistle was written, the Lord had tarried; the apostle knew not the hour of his return, and was inspired simply to announce that it would be sure and soon. It is the less reasonable to cite Matt. 25 in support of the notion that a long-revealed delay is reconcilable with constantly waiting for Christ, seeing that not a word in the Virgins or the Talents protracts his return beyond the lifetime of those first watching or trading. There is nothing to imply even another generation to succeed the one addressed. Of course we are arguing solely from the Lord's own words, and supposing the disciples to know nothing of the future, save what was fairly deducible thence. Ex post facto we know that the delay has been extended; but the question is: Could—ought—the apostles to have gathered a delay of eighteen centuries at least, from what the Lord uttered? our view, all is simple. The calling of the faithful, as here presented, was to go forth in order to meet the bridegroom: their sin was that they all slumbered and slept. The delay, which should have proved their patience, gave occasion to their unfaithfulness; and when the cry was made at midnight, they have to resume their first position— “Go ye out to meet him!” The course pursued by our Lord, we need scarcely say, was worthy of himself—the wisest, tenderest, and best in every way. He showed the only right object for the virgins; he warned all of such a delay as should check impatience, but not such as should entitle those then (or at any time) alive to say, “The bridegroom is not coming in our day.” If he had wished his people to be continually expecting him, but withal not to be stumbled if he tarried he could have done, it seems to us, no other than he has done.

But we are told that our view is founded “on a very narrow induction of Scripture passages, and stands opposed to the spirit of a large and very important class of divine testimonies"; that we hold up but one future event, (namely, Christ's coming,) and even but one aspect of it, (namely, its nearness,) and the corresponding duty of watching for it; that other purposes had to be served besides these, which have drawn forth truths of quite another order; and if the one set of passages, taken by themselves, might seem to imply that Christ might come tomorrow, there are whole classes of passages which clearly show that the reverse of this was the mind of the Spirit. “I refer to those Scriptures which announce the work to be done, and the extensive changes to come over the face of the church and of society, between the two advents” (Brown, p. 33). The first class of passages includes the commission in Matt. 28:18-20, the parables (in chap. of the tares, mustard-seed, leaven and net, as well as those texts which announce the transfer of the kingdom from the Jews to the Gentiles, Matt. 21:43; Luke 21:24; Rom. 11:25—26; and Acts 1:6-8. The question is, whether any intelligent Christian could look for all this in his own lifetime. Now, we do not hesitate to say that a true-hearted believer, after the day of Pentecost, had better grounds for expecting the world-wide diffusion of the gospel within the span of his own generation, than Dr. B. has for expecting it now, in ten centuries of such missionary efforts and successes as the world has witnessed since. We are aware that this judgment will be unpalatable to who those derive their thoughts from the strains of modern platforms and reports, and we shall be told that we are paralyzing their energies. We do rebuke their Laodiceanism; but God forbid that our belief in the increasing dangers and deceits of the present and future, and in the imminence of divine judgments, not on Rome only, but on universal Christendom, should not lead us to desire quickened zeal and redoubled exertions on the part of ourselves, and all the servants of the Lord, that at least a true testimony in ay be rendered everywhere. And this God will surely bless, as far as it seemeth him good, but not the baseless expectations even of Christians. It is evident that Dr. B. exaggerates the results to be expected; misinterpretation leads to hopes doomed to bitter disappointment, and so works no little mischief in practice. The Lord, in Matt. 28, merely gives the universal direction of their service, in contrast with legal narrowness, its blessed character flowing out of the name of God, no longer hidden, but fully revealed; and his own far deeper than Messianic authority and presence with them. All the Gentiles, or nations, (not the Jews only, as heretofore,) were to be the objects of this evangelization 3 and he guarantees to be with them, as thus engaged, unto the end of the age: but not a trace of the predicted effects. Indeed, in his previous prophecy, Matt. 24:14, the Lord had said that ''this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations.” If no more than this had been clone, Matt. 28 would have been fulfilled, and there was nothing to hinder it before the end of the Jewish polity arrived, though one would not restrict it to that. So also Paul reminds the Colossians that the gospel was come to them as in all the world, and bringeth forth fruit, &e. Again, the tares were sown during the earliest slumbers of Christ's servants. What else were the ungodly men who had even then crept in unawares, Jude 4, 16? What else the false teachers, with many who followed their pernicious ways, 2 Peter 2:1 Thessalonians tares, like the wheat, were in the field (or world), and not merely in Israel; but there is nothing to imply a course of centuries, either for the good or the evil. The net presents, if possible, less difficulty still: all the fish of the sea are not enclosed, but the net is filled with some of every kind. No doubt the “end of the age” closes the scene, and, judicially separates; but why, as far as the chapter teaches, might not this have been before the apostolic era had ceased? No solid reason for protracting the dispensation can be assigned, but the will of They are times and seasons which the Father has put in his own power. Nor is it true that the tree is said to overshadow the world, any more than the leaven is said to overspread all human society (p. 35). How long was to elapse before the end was in no way revealed. Doubtless, the word left room for a prolonged scene; but certainly those parables do not per se disclose, much less necessitate, that prolongation. And this is the whole matter; for we are speaking of the expectation derived front the word. The tree might remain a long while, the leaven take some time leavening; but all this is left open As to Matt. 21:43, Luke 21:24, and Rom. 11:25, 26, they have no dates or equivalent landmarks to render them precise. They are expressed in general terms, and therefore cannot be made to prove a delay of centuries, though room is lull for it. Acts 1:6-8 speaks of no witnesses save those addressed and then living; it cannot, therefore, as an argument strengthen the position of a necessarily long delay. God's testimony was borne faithfully in that very age to the utmost limits of the known world. And as for that which followed for more than 1000 years, the less that is said the better: the Lord does not sanction or notice it here.

Next, such passages as 1 Tim. 4:2, 1-3, 2 Tim. 3:2, 1-5 Pet. 3:3, 4, even Dr. B. does not press; because (these germs of evil being at work) a primitive Christian, as he allows, might readily conceive of their full development in no long time. Taken in connection with the former chapter, he thinks them fitted to repress our idea. But we have only to examine the context of these and similar Scriptures, in order to see that, however the delay may have ripened the various forms of pravity, they were already there, and because they were, are warned against by the apostles. Hence it is impossible to say that these revelations necessarily involve a long future; especially as many who look for Christ's coming, believe that between our removal to meet him in the air, and our appearing with him in judgment, there will be an interval, during which the darkest shadows of prophecy shall have their appalling accomplishment.

“There is still a class of passages, greatly clearer to the same effect, of which one example may suffice for all.” Acts 3:20, 22, is then cited. “Would any Christian in apostolic times, though unable to tell what might be meant by this 'restitution of all things,' be encouraged by it to expect the immediate or rely speedy return of Christ to the earth"? pp. 37. To us this reasoning seems the more extraordinary, as it is in the face of the context itself. It is evident that the apostle calls on the Jews to repent and be converted, that their sins might be blotted out, so that (not when) the times of refreshing might come from the presence of the Lord, and he night send Jesus Christ, &c., whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, Unquestionably the work must be vast, but why should it not be a short one? To our mind the passage has a force directly and powerfully opposed to Dr. B.'s conclusion. We do not doubt that Peter then regarded the repentance of Israel as a possible if not probable contingency; and the passage itself shows that, on their repentance, the mission of Jesus from heaven would surely follow without delay. Not an allusion appears in the passage to the footing which the gospel had to get in the world; not a hint of blows to be afflicted on the heathenism of the empire (pp. 38). These notions imported into Acts 3 we consider clouds, not “light on this point": they are interpolation, rather than interpretation.

In the parable of the pounds, Luke 19:11, 27, the Lord is correcting the mistake of those who thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear. That is, they seem to have connected it with his next visit to Jerusalem. They forgot (alas, how often!) that first must he suffer many things and be rejected of this generation—yea, that he must accomplish his decease at Jerusalem. This parable, accordingly, corrects this hasty notion of the disciples, and the form in which it is conveyed in Matt. 25 conveys the additional circumstance of the absence of the Lord for a long time. But it is equally obvious that the revealed delay was relative, not absolute: that, so far as the parable speaks, the return might be before the death e: the servants who first received and employed their master's talents.

Of Dr. Ur wick's remark [that the only errors mentioned in the New Testament respecting the time of our Lord's coming, all consist in dating it too early] one can scarcely speak in too strong terms of censure. It is a worthy sequel of it, that his first example is the case or the servant who says, “My Lord delayeth his coming"!! When words expressly designed to show the evil state of heart, and the pernicious consequences of putting the expectation of the Lord's return, can be urged by Dr. U. and repeated by Dr. B. as an instance of the error of dating it too early, it is high time to suspend discussion and to pray that our brethren may be delivered from the influence of a scheme which turns light into darkness and calls darkness light. The process of assumption, whereby the Lord's warning is thus perverted, is painfully instructive; but we have no further space to bestow on such a mode of dealing with the word of God.

A similar observation applies to, and may suffice for, the use made of the importunate widow in Luke 18:1-8. Besides, it is the Son of man's coming in judgment: and this, as already remarked, leaves room for a great and rapid development of evil at the close of the age, instead of being spread over ten or fifteen centuries.

2 Thess. 2 is the only Scripture which remains. Though it is the one on which Dr. B. has dwelt longest and most confidently, it is perhaps of all others the least understood. He supposes that the corrupt Jewish element— “that the kingdom of God should immediately appear” —had taken a stirring form in the Thessalonian church. “Their inexperienced minds and warm hearts were plied with the thrilling proclamation, 'that THE DAY OF CHRIST WAS AT HAND,' or 'IMMINENT’ (ἑνέστηκε). And how does the apostle meet their expectation! He fearlessly crushes it... No such entreaty, we may safely affirm, would ever come from a premillennialist—at least of the modern school. He would be afraid of 'destroying the possibility of watching’” (pp. 42, 43). Now we meet this, and what follows, by the two-fold assertion, 1St, that Dr. B.'s view requires us to confound the coming or presence of the Lord and His day, which we maintain to be here not only distinguished but contrasted; and 2nd, that it demands a indubitably wrong rendering of ἑνέστηκε. What the Apostle really combats is the impression, that the day of the Lord was present or come, (not “at hand”). Nowhere is it denied that the day is at hand; nay, more, Paul himself afterward tells the Roman saints that “the day is at hand.” Is it to be believed that he deliberately affirms to them what he had denied to the Thessalonians? Such is the natural dilemma in which our version of 2 Thess. 2:2 plunges those who accent it, if they will but compare Rom. 13:12. As the latter text is without doubt correct (for it is the simple, sure, and sole possible meaning of the Greek), he who believes that the Spirit could not contradict himself would naturally sift the former. And what is the result? That in every other occurrence of the word in the New Testament we are compelled to assign a different meaning to the perfect of ἑνίστημι. Nay, our translators themselves give present, and never merely, “to be at hand,” or “imminent.” In several instances they exhibit, and with perfect accuracy, “present” in contradistinction to “future,” or “coming.” (Compare Romans 8:38; 1 Cor. 3:22; 7:26; Gal. 1:4; and Heb. 9:9; besides 2 Tim. 3:1.) Nor is it Paul only who presses that the day is nigh, for the same truth, substantially, reappears in 1 Peter 4:7, (“the end of all things is at hand,”) as well as in James 4:7—9, not to speak of Rev. 1:3; 22:10. That is, the New Testament is, from first to last, positive and consistent in maintaining what 2 Thess. 2:2 appears to set aside, but what we have seen is, beyond legitimate question, a mistranslation; and this mistranslation is the grand basis of Dr. B.'s argument.

Hence, he entirely misconceives the drift of the delusion which the false teachers were seeking to foist in. For they were exciting fear, and not hope; whereas the apostle beseeches the brethren by their hope, even the presence of the Lord, which is to gather them to himself in the air, not to be shaken or troubled, as if his day, his judgment, were arrived. It was not feverish enthusiasm, but uneasy apprehension, in consequence of the terror of that day being brought on their souls. The misleaders may have given that turn to the trials which these saints were then underlying, or to any other external circumstances supposed to be capable of such a color. They may have taken advantage of the Old Testament application of that term to God's summary inflictions on particular places and people. However they may have brought it about, the fact is clear that the false teachers did alarm the Thessalonians with the cry that the day was there; and the remedy which the apostle applies is, first, recalling them to their proper hope of being caught up to the Lord at his coming—an antidote as thoroughly pre-millennial as it is the last which our adversaries would think of; next, he explains to them that the day of the Lord presupposes not merely lawlessness working, as even then it was secretly, but, all restraint being removed, its rise to such a height and its manifestation in such a head, that the Lord must terminate all by his own appearing in decisive judgment.

It is allowed, then, that the apostle shows that the day of the Lord could not come before the apostasy, and the revelation of the man of sin, because that day is to judge it root and branch; but there is nothing to imply that the obstacle, then operating, might not be taken away in ever so short a time; and in that case the last evil or lawless one being revealed would bring on the day. There is no protracted system, but a mysterious evil then at work; and when a certain hindrance, then also existing, should be removed, that power of evil would appear without mystery, which is to call down the Lord's judgment.

We have now examined the use which Dr. B. has made of the various Scriptures to which he refers, in proof that the known interval of 1000 years, and more, is compatible with that watching for the Lord's coming which the New Testament supposes and enjoins. We have proved his application in every instance to be ungrounded and fallacious. We have shown that the true position, in which the New Testament sets the church, is the looking for Christ's return habitually, not knowing how soon it may be; whereas Dr. B.'s theory is the certainty that it cannot be till the millennium is past, and the absolute impossibility of our being alive and remaining till the Savior comes.

Can such an one be said, in a natural, unambiguous, and full sense, to wait for the Savior from heaven? He is really expecting first a millennium on earth, which, by the way, if true, would have been the obvious corrective to the false rumor that troubled the Thessalonians; but not a word of the sort is hinted by the apostle. Confessedly, pre-millennialists have been at a loss how to reconcile 2 Thess. 2:2, as it ordinarily stands, with the general testimony of the New Testament: but was not their difficulty more worthy of respect than Dr. B.'s shadowy triumph, founded, as it is, on a mere blunder, though we allow he shares it with many men on both sides? It ought to be a serious thing to his conscience when he discovers, as we trust he will on adequate examination, with prayer, that the delusion which alarmed the Thessalonians is, of the two, more conceivable on Dr. B.'s own hypothesis, pp. 426-432, than on the principles of pre-millennialism rightly understood: for it. was probably built upon a figurative sense of the day of the Lord, and it assuredly consisted in its alleged presence there and then. On the other hand, the nearness of Christ's coming, which Dr. B. characterizes as that delusion, and imputes to designing men, is, we are bold to say, the uniform presentation of the Holy Ghost.

The oscillation theory, with which Dr. Brown concludes his second chapter, may be passed over without further comment. Other topics of more importance we hope to discuss in due order, if the Lord will.

The Premillennial Advent: 3. Millennialism Consistent With the Completeness of the Church at Christ's Coming Again

Dr. Brown arranges his evidence against the premillennial advent under a series of propositions, the first of which is, the church will be absolutely complete at Christ's coming. “If this can be established, the whole system falls to the ground. If all that are to be saved, will be brought in before Christ comes, of course there can be none to come in after his advent, and in that case, the lower department of the expected kingdom disappears.”

Now, the fact is, that the mass of pre-millenarians hold the unbroken completeness of the church at the second advent, no less strenuously than Dr. B. How then comes it, that they and their adversary appear to hold the same thing? Because “the church” has a different sense in their lips and in his. They hold that Scripture limits the term, in its proper application, to the saints that are now being gathered by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Dr. 13. extends it equally to “all that are to be saved,” the millennial saints included. Were this true, the question would be at an end: for it is admitted on all hands, that, when Christ comes, his body, the bride, is complete. If scripture proved on the other hand, that the church of God is exclusive of the millennial saints, that others, after the church is formed, may be and shall be saved, who stand in quite different relationships, the reasoning is at least good for nothing.

Our Lord, in Matt. 16:18, decides the question. Salvation was not a new thing, though the work which procured it had still to be accomplished. But his church was not yet built. “Upon this rock I WILL build my church.” It was not even building. The foundation had to be laid in his own death and resurrection, himself, the revealed and confessed Son of the living God, its rock. Accordingly, for this new building—the Lord prescribed, in Matt. 18, an order of discipline equally new—not Jewish law and ordinance, but grace, practical grace, reigning through righteousness, acting after the pattern of the Father's will, and the Son's work. Accordingly for the first time, we have in Acts 2:47, this body, the church, historically spoken of. It supposes two things: 1St, Christ crucified, risen and ascended; and 2nd, the Holy Ghost, “the promise of the Father,” sent down from heaven. It is of all importance to understand this last point; for confusion is here fatal to real intelligence as to this subject. It is not the regeneration of the Spirit; for that was true from the first, and will always be true of those who see, or enter the kingdom of God. It the gift, the personal presence of the Spirit, sealing the believers (now that there was not promise only, but accomplishment in Christ), the earnest of the inheritance, and above all, baptizing them, whether Jew or Gentile into one body—an altogether unprecedented work. Previous to the cross, such an union did not exist, and was contrary to God's command. Our Savior, during his earthly ministry, bound the disciples to seek Jews only, not Gentiles or Samaritans. Risen from the dead, he sends them expressly to disciple all nations.

But this is not all. The Holy Ghost, given by the ascended Lord, brings all the disciples, Jew or Gentile, into one body or corporation on earth. When we say “one body,” we do not mean that all the members of the church necessarily assembled in a single locality, but that, whether they met in one chamber or in twenty, in one city or over the world, they formed a united society in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, of which the Holy Ghost, dwelling in and with them, was the bond. To this body, all the believers, all the saved since Pentecost, belong; but it would be a false inference that God can never terminate its existence here below, nor introduce a totally different thing for the display of his own ways and glory. As there were saved persons in the Old Testament times, who were not, and could not be members of a society then future, so there is no reason why there should not be a fresh class of witnesses raised up by and by, and called to a different work. Nay, we can go farther. Scripture is explicit, that Jewish and Gentile distinctions are to reappear in the Millennium. The Psalms and prophets which reveal this glorious time, reveal as plainly, that it essentially differs from the present dispensation, because God will not then be gathering Jew and Gentile into one. Jews and Gentiles are to be blessed richly, but in unequal measure; the former being the nearest to the Lord, and enjoying his presence and honor most, the grand link between him and the Gentiles. This, we need scarcely say, is as different as possible from the present time, when, in Christ, all earthly and fleshly distinctions disappear: all is of grace and above nature, and as free, consequently, to the Gentile as to the Jew.

These differences of dispensation are so patent in the Old. and New Testaments as to render the citation of particular proof-texts a work of supererogation. We defy any Christian to produce a single passage to the contrary. Nevertheless Dr. B. ignores all. To him, “all the saved” are the church; the Old Testament saints, those of the New Testament, and those of the Millennium, all compose “the church.” We ask for Scripture; he can produce none. He supposes and affirms that they are all one and the same body; but he has not a tittle of divine evidence, not a single text which implies that God regards them all as his church. The burden of proof lies on him; for such is his assertion, and it is essential to the greater part of his book. He is absolutely without any other proof than common, loose, traditional notions, the language of many ancient and modern theologians, but no such statement or insinuation in the word of God. If it be, where? If it be not, Dr. B.'s reasoning rests on an unscriptural assumption. The church of God, in the proper New Testament use of the expression, means not the aggregate of the saved from the beginning to the end, but those who, since Christ's ascension, are being builded together, whether Jew or Gentile, for an habitation of God through the Spirit, baptized by the Spirit into one body, of which Christ glorified is the Head. Such a basis did not exist during our Lord's life, much less before. Hence, though possessed of life, through faith, as all preceding saints were, even the apostles had not the baptism of the Spirit which forms the one body, till Jesus was glorified and sent down the Holy Ghost in a way never before experienced by man (John 14-16.) “Ye shall be,” says the Lord, just before he was taken up, “baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.” Pentecost saw his word fulfilled. Now it is by this operation that the body, the church, is formed, not by regeneration merely, which is common to all saints of all ages, but by the baptism of the Holy Ghost, which was unknown to any before Christ was by the right hand of God exalted. Outward signs accompanied the gift and announced it visibly to the world. But it is not to be confounded with the miraculous powers which were its external vouchers; for before he was given, the Lord said that this other Paraclete should abide with the disciples forever, which was never said of the sign-gifts. For indeed, this baptism of the Spirit is the formative and perpetuative power of the church's existence; so that where he was not thus given, the church would not be; and so long as the church exists here below, so does this baptism of the Spirit last. “For by one Spirit,” says Paul (1 Cor. 12:13), “are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.”

Undoubtedly then, as all agree there were saints, saved persons born of the Spirit, before Pentecost, so all agree there shall be during the Millennium. But Scripture is plain and decisive that the baptism of the Spirit, gathering believing Jews and Gentiles into one body on earth, was not the state of things which existed before Pentecost; It is equally clear that it will not exist after the Millennium begins. Jews and Gentiles were saved before Christ, as they will be on a still grander scale in the Millennium; but there is no such thing described as union in one body, where all distinctions in the flesh vanish away.

These principles will enable the reader to judge how far the following passages decide the matter.

From 1 Cor. 15:23, Dr. B. deduces that “they that are Christ's” mean the whole federal offspring of the second Adam. But he forgets that the question is one of resurrection. This is so true that a special added revelation comes in, towards the close of the chapter, so as to meet the case of the saints whom Christ will find living when he comes. Thus the previous statement (in verse 23), which Dr. B. alleges to be so universal as to embrace all the saved of every dispensation, is in reality so restricted as not to admit all the saints of the present dispensation. Hence, it was needful for the Holy Ghost to supplement the general argument of the chapter, with a particular unfolding of what, in the Old Testament, was a secret. “Behold, I show you a mystery: We shall not ALL sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” Dr. B. says quite correctly, as opposed to Mr. Birks, that the burden of this chapter as a whole, and of verse 23rd especially, is the RESURRECTION of believers; but, for that reason, it does not include in its general scope, the saints who survive at the second advent; and accordingly another statement, as to their portion as connected with those who rise from the dead is furnished by the Spirit from verses 51 et seq. But the same principle still more emphatically excludes the millennial saints; for it has never been shown that they, as a class, are to die at all. Nay, Isa. 65 seems to us decisive, not that death is destroyed, but that saints will not die during the millennium, that none will die save those judicially accursed of God. Hence, 1 Cor. 15:23, could not apply to these saints; for it speaks solely of those who die and rise again, whereas the saved of the millennium, it would appear, shall never see death. 1 Cor. 15:51 proves that the text on which the chief stress is laid, so far from comprehending “the whole saving fruit of Christ's work,” leaves out all the members of the church who shall be alive and remaining when the Lord comes. The argument of Dr. B. is then absolutely null and clearly refuted by the chapter itself.

Still less need such texts as Eph. 5:2, 25-27; Thess. 1:10, Jude 24, Col. 1:21, 22, and 1 Thess. 3:13, perplex any one. How do statements of the church's glory and purity, any more than its completeness, prove that none else are to be blessed? Doubtless the church will be to the praise and admiration of Christ at his revelation from heaven; doubtless all will be regarded with ineffable complacency by “God, even our Father.” Nevertheless, the questions remain: Is not the millennium a time of exceeding blessing for the world, for countless souls among Jews and Gentiles, according to the Old Testament? and is it not, according to the New Testament, the special season for the reign of Christ and the heavenly saints manifested over the earth? These propositions we, affirm to be equally true, and mutually consistent. But if they are, Dr. B.'S theory, which sets the completeness, &c., of the church at Christ's advent in opposition to the ingathering of saints subsequently upon the earth, is, if he will forgive our saying it, confusion arising from ignorance of the Scriptures.

It is a question of the Bible in general, and not merely of two or three texts like Zech. 14:5, Rev. 19:6; 9, and 21:2-1; though these do plainly indicate the calling of other saints after, and distinct from, the church.

Dr. B. tries to defeat the application of Zech. 14 to the advent partly by questioning whether “saints” here may not mean angels, and chiefly, because the “coming” is not a personal advent, but perhaps the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, or even the conflicts before the millennium. The minute literal details, are, to his mind, irreconcilable with 2 Peter 3:10. Evidently here, as elsewhere, Christ's coming is confounded with his day. There are connecting links between the subjects; but it is an error to suppose that the burning up of the earth signalizes his coming (Brown, p. 59). That tremendous catastrophe occurs within the day of the Lord, and, as we learn from other Scriptures, at its close, not at its commencement. There is no reason, therefore, from 2 Peter 3:10, to deny that Zech. 14:5 speaks of Christ's literal coming again to inaugurate the millennium; and if so, there are certainly men on earth subsequently saved and blessed.

This is confirmed by Rev. 19:6- 9, where no ingenuity can fairly dispose of the fact that the marriage of the Lamb with the church takes place before the millennium, when confessedly the elect are not complete. “In reply to this,” says Dr. B., “it may be enough to say that this cannot be the actual consummation of the marriage between Christ and his church in glory, because in the two last chapters of this book (which most of my opponents agree with me in referring to the everlasting state) the church is described as “descending,” after the millennium is all over, “as a bride adorned for her husband;” and it is rather awkward to suppose a bridal preparation and a presentation of the parties to each other, a thousand years after the union has been consummated.” But this is totally to misconceive the bearing of these Scriptures. The marriage, beyond a doubt, takes place not, in Rev. 21, after the millennium, but in Rev. 19, before it. The latter chapter merely describes the descent of the glorified church, already long married, and now entering on the eternal state, in relation to the new heavens and earth in the fullest sense, invested after the 1,000 years with the same bridal beauty which characterized her when made ready for the wedding. What is to hinder one from speaking of his wife, ten years after the marriage, and setting out on some grand occasion “as a bride adorned for her husband?” How absurd to infer, from such a simile, that the parties were only presented to each other so many years after the union was consummated!

As to Rev. 21:24, there is not the slightest need that the object and the payers of the homage, the New Jerusalem, and the nations with their kings, should be homogeneous, or in the same state. It is the very thing we deny, the very thing Dr. B. ought to prove and not assume. Why should not the nations and their kings be in an earthly condition, the New Jerusalem being surely glorified? Why should not the latter answer to the transfigured Moses and Elias, and the former to the disciples, still unchanged upon the Holy Mount (especially as the word εις may mean the vague unto, the context so requiring it, no less than the mole precise “into,” which Dr. B. aπpears to allow, as indeed he must)? The simple, unforced meaning of the passage presents the conjunction of two different states: a higher and heavenly one; a subordinate, though blessed, earthly one or can this be got rid of by the pretense that it is merely a mysterious prophecy which discloses the co-existence of two different conditions, so abhorrent to Dr. B. One might fairly ask where else it could be so naturally expected as in a hook which expressly lifts the veil from the future. Still it is not made known there only. “Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world?” Dr. B. cannot here argue that the “saints” mean angels, for the next verse positively distinguishes and contrasts them. “Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” There would be no sense if the terms were interchangeable. “Unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world οἰκουμένην to come whereof, we speak.” This must be in millennial times; for no such order of things can possibly exist after the millennium, and it is clearly contrary to the suffering and subject place which Scripture assigns to the saints before the millennium. The inference is plain and sure. It is the millennial relation of the heavenly saints, not of men in flesh and blood on earth. “Know ye not, that we shall judge angels?” Assuredly it is not our employment in this dispensation, or throughout eternity. The teaching of Eph. 1:10 is similar. God hath purposed in himself, in (for or against) the dispensation of the fullness of times, to gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in him in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, &c. Clearly the apostle speaks not of the present, but of a future period, and of a grand gathering of all things, earthly and heavenly, under the headship of Christ, we being associated with him as Eve with Adam in his dominion. That is, it is the millennial and not the eternal state; for the millennium is the special display before the world of Christ's exaltation as King: that over, Christ gives up the kingdom that GOD (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) should be all in all here, then, we have two states, the things which are in heaven, and the things which are on earth, united in a system of glory; not the earthly things sublimated into heavenly, much less the heavenly things reduced to the earthly level, but both, in their several spheres, under the sway of Christ and his bridal co-heir. Probably Dr. B. might tell us here too, as well as in Rev. 21:24 (p. 62), that the commentators agree in applying the verse to one or other of these states, but not to both. We regret it of course; but this does not lessen our conviction that the word is against them, and that no serious Christian should allow modern tradition, any more than ancient, to make Scripture of none effect.

We have no space for dwelling on Dr. B.'s exposure of such vagaries as those of Homes, Burnet, Perry, and Burchell. If we were called on to analyze them, we might find grounds for a deeper tone of censure than what marks his criticisms. Their common difficulty is the Gentile army which Satan musters at the end of all, Rev. 20: their solutions, a mere choice of fable; for the first two take the rebels to be mortal men, and one of these two thinks that they may probably be generated from the slime of the ground and heat of the sun the third conceived them to be the wicked when raised out of their graves, and the fourth, evil spirits. In reality they agree, or differ, quite as much with Dr. B.'s scheme as with ours.

As to the renewed asseverations that the church means “the universal family of the redeemed,” a few words must suffice:-

1. “They that are Christ's at his coming,” and all like texts, are necessarily limited to the dead saints. Such passages, therefore, CANNOT refer to the saints of the millennium who are never said to die.

2. Such views, being true to the letter and spirit of these scriptures, are just what ought to be looked for from those who rightly interpret the word of God. Those who argue from the use of figurative language, against the facts thereby announced, are as little to be trusted, ofttimes, in dealing with the plainest declarations in the Bible. The pre-millennial advent is a truth which loosens their system. It is no wonder then to witness the pertinacity with which it is rejected till God teach them better.

3. The inconsistency of pre-millenarians (pp. 72-77) is not so great, in the extracts cited, as Dr. B. imagines; and even if it were real rather than apparent, it would evince the badness, not of the cause, but of its advocates. We humbly think that we have in hand something more important than the justification of the Bloomsbury lecturers.

The pre-millennial scheme reconciles the doctrine of the completeness of the church at Christ's coming with a harvest of saints during the millennium. There is no dilemma, no shade of difficulty, save to him who starts with ignoring the scriptural definition and account of the church of God. And the notion of Christ's coming to the earth only after the millennium, so far from being “the belief which clears all up,” (p. 79), is sheer error. For the vision of the great White Throne judgment is in fact no coming of Christ, but a going of the dead before Him—no return of the Lord or of any one else to the earth, for there is no earth to come to. “I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and heaven fed away; and there was found no place for them.”

The “Supplementary Remarks” demand small notice front us; for we have already stated the sound view of “the church,” and it differs too decidedly from that of Messrs. Bickersteth and A. Bonar, and even from the Duke of Manchester's, to claim our interposition in their battles. For, although his Grace rightly made its starting-point to be the ascension of Christ, he very wrongly uses Archdeacon Hare's citation of Olshausen to prove that regeneration belongs essentially to the New Testament—a delusion which one had hoped was confined to the author of “Nehushtan,” and his wretched “Teaching of the Types.” Salvation is not possible, in any dispensation, by external operations of the Spirit; he always quickened souls, as he ever will, by the word of God. Nor is it a question of excluding the Old Testament saints from the scene of glory which we shall enjoy with them in the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 8:11). But common privileges, either of grace or of glory, cannot disprove the plain testimony of the word, that the baptism of the Spirit (as distinct from regeneration) was not experienced before Pentecost; that on that baptism depends the body, the church, wherein Jewish and Gentile differences are unknown—the distinguishing feature of the present economy; and that the millennium will see another condition where these distinctions reappear, with many features of the times before Pentecost, and with others peculiar to the new age. There are, thank God, many mercies which essentially pertain to all saints of all ages; but these must not be abused to deny differences which God's sovereignty has affixed to the various dispensations as it has pleased him. Heb. 11:40, taken naturally, stands in the way of Dr. B. How, (will the reader guess) does he explain it away They without us could not be made perfect—that is, without Christ and the Spirit! whose proper economy ours certainly is. (p. 84.) Well, this is no pleasant fruit of post-millennial interpretation. It is a bold figure, in expounding a plain doctrinal statement, to treat “without us,” as equivalent to without Christ and the Spirit. Besides, it is in no way the meaning even thus: for the Holy Ghost lays down two things; 1St, that God has provided some better thing for us (i.e. clearly something better than “the promise,” precious as it was, for which all the Old Testament saints were waiting); and 2nd, that the Old Testament saints were not to be perfected, (viz., by resurrection glory,) apart from us.

Thus, the word of God, while showing ample ground where we all meet, is decisive that the elect are not to be jumbled together in a single indiscriminate mass, and proves most important distinctions, not merely between the church and the millennial saints, but between those of the Old Testament and either. It never speaks, on our view any more than Dr. Brown's, of any portion of the church not rising and reigning with Christ. On the contrary, it proves that many saints besides the church shall reign with Christ when he comes.

The Premillennial Advent: 4. In Relation to the Agencies of Salvation

The church of God, we have seen, is not the sum of those saved throughout all ages, but rather the Scriptural designation of the one body gathered from among Jews and Gentiles since the day of Pentecost—an habitation of God through the Spirit. Hence it is a manifest oversight to suppose that the agencies and instrumentalities which the Lord employs in founding and perpetuating the church, are necessarily bound up with the salvation of the elect. “God hath set some in the church, first apostles [not patriarchs, or elders, who of old obtained a good report through faith]; secondarily, prophets; thirdly, teachers;” &c. That is, a New Testament order of things is contemplated. So in Eph. 4: “When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men....; and he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,” &c. This machinery, most appropriate to the church-state, came in with the ascension of Christ to his place as Head, and with the consequent descent of the Holy Ghost. It was unknown to Judaism, and to the fathers. Yet all must allow God had been saving souls for four thousand years previously, when no such means or functions existed. There is not, therefore, the shadow of a presumption for maintaining that God will discontinue to save when the church disappears, scaffolding, building, and all. So that the fairest and most satisfactory test which Dr. B. can imagine, by which to try the truth of his doctrine, exposes, in effect, its total groundlessness; and confirms, in the most decided way, the specialty of the church as a body distinct, on the one hand, from the Old Testament saints, and on the other, from the millennial saints. Ministry, such as the New Testament connects inseparably with the church, flows from an ascended Lord as its source and giver, and the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven as its power. Nevertheless, as beyond doubt saints there were before, all must own that saints there may be after.

Plainly, then, the testimony of Scripture is lost, in the second, third, and fourth propositions, which are connected, and as follows: -

“Christ's Second Corning will exhaust the object of the Scriptures.

“The sealing ordinances of the New Testament will disappear at Christ's Second Coming.

“The intercession of Christ, and the work of the Spirit, for saving purposes, will cease at the Second Advent.”

For though it be true that baptism and the Lord's Supper (i.e. in theological phrase, the New Testament sealing ordinances) naturally terminate with the Second Advent, it is a mere blunder to confine the stream of divine grace within these rites, let them be ever so precious; and much worse to treat them as its sole and inseparable channel. Abel, Enoch, and Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, knew them not; yet will Dr. B. acknowledge, that they were saved no less than ourselves. Why should it not be so with the saints during the millennium? Let us, however, examine what is urged, and in Dr. B.'s order. The following texts are cited as instances of the universal teaching of the Bible—(1) As to Saints, Luke 19:13 2 Peter 1:19; James 5:7 Pet. 1:13 2Tim. 4:8; Phil. 3:20: (2) As to Sinners, 2 Thess. 1:7-10; 2 Peter 3:10; Luke 12:39, 40; 17:26, 27, 30. “Thus one half of the Scripture would be inapplicable to saints, and the other half to sinners living after Christ's coming” (Brown, p. 98).

Now it is obvious that these texts are drawn exclusively from the New Testament, and from those parts of it which describe or suppose the state of things going on now, and previous to the millennium. What they prove, therefore, is the experience proper to the present dispensation, and nothing more. But this is useless, in all fairness, to Dr. B., who fallaciously takes for granted that these texts give us that which characterizes souls in the age to come. The argument deduced from them is no more valid against another experience in a new economy, than passages descriptive of the Lord as truly man in life and death could disprove his eternal Godhead. The Psalms and prophecies of both Testaments, anticipate an era when (not to speak of Satan bound, and the Lord, with his risen ones, reigning over the world) righteousness shall flourish and evil be smitten; when the earth shall groan no more, but be glad; when both houses of Israel shall walk before the Lord in unenvying unjealous love, and all the ends of the earth shall fear God. These features are in contrast with those which now appear: they suppose a time for the saints on earth of good triumphant and not suffering, of enjoyment, and not hope; they involve the judgment of wickedness when it appears, not merely solemn warnings of future vengeance. It is perfectly right to use such Scriptures as Dr. B. refers to for our own guidance now; it is ignorance to neglect a mass of prophecy which predicts the earth full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, when the Lord's people shall not be a little flock, and the godly shall not suffer persecution. That will be a day of glory doubtless, but not to the drying up of the stream of active saving mercy. “In that day shall ye say, Praise the Lord, call upon his name, declare his doings among the people, make mention that his name is exalted.” It is clear that now, between the advents, the Lord is saving the world, and not judging it: we speak of the aspect of his coming and work, not, of course, of the results. The error is the exclusion of another economy when he will both judge and save. “And it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall punish the host of the high ones on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth.” This is a most extensive and positive judgment; but it is in no way inconsistent with saying “in that day, lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us; this is the Lord: we have waited for him; we will be glad and rejoice in Isis salvation.” The evidence is ample. If the reader will only search into what is said of “that day,” he will soon satisfy himself that, while it differs essentially from the present dispensation as the season of divine intervention in the judgment of the world, it will be as evidently the season of the world's all but universal blessedness.

Hence, the disappearance of baptism and the Lord's supper need be no difficulty to any serious mind. Their importance is indisputable—the one, as the initiatory and individual, and the other as the corporate, confession of Christ and his accomplished redemption. But as they were certainly introduced late in the day of God's mercy to sinners, so if God has willed it thus, there is no ground a priori why they might not pass away, when that special hour which witnessed their imposition has come to a close. And this is exactly what Scripture shows, however opposed to the ordinary systems of theology. Not that there is the slightest reason for expecting a new revelation, as some have rashly conceived: still less is it true, as our antagonist asserts without an attempt at proof, that “a new dispensation necessarily implies a new revelation to usher it in” (Brown, p. 106). The Bible shows a past economy, when God saved souls before the sealing ordinances of the New Testament had appeared; it shows us the present time, and the institution of those striking rites; it shows us a future epoch clearly revealed in the prophets, when they vanish away, and yet Jehovah's house shall be called a house of prayer for all people. In other words, the old revelation is express as to a new dispensation, or age, when the glory of God shall be manifest in Christ, and his government instead of being true to faith only, shall be justified in public immediate action before the world. The sinner now, as in all past ages, is saved by grace, utterly irrespective of the external seal, ordinance or no ordinance; it will be so far the same then, whatever be the outward forms of confession. If, as we believe, they differ, this depends on the revealed will of God, and merely distinguishes the dispensations, not the salvation. All is a question of the divine mind made known in his word, not of what “we may expect to find,” which is a prolific source of mistake and confusion. Beyond a doubt, Matt. 28:18-20, and 1 Cor. 11:26, do not extend beyond the time of Christ's absence from this world; but can Dr. B. deny that grace saved before baptism and the Lord's supper? If not, it is ridiculous to argue thence that it may not save after they are taken out the way. Nay, more: Scripture demonstrates that salvation does go on in “the world (οίκουμενη habitable earth) to come” when neither is heard of.

The same reasoning, in substance, applies to Dr. B.'s fourth proposition. It is true that the Epistle to the Hebrews (7-9) treats exclusively of the priesthood of Christ carried on within the holiest, after he had entered in once by his own blood; it is true that this applies from beginning to end of God's work in forming the church of the First-born. Christ ascended and took his place as Priest, before the Holy Ghost was sent down to bring in a single soul into the proper “church-state.” But how does all this hinder the only-wise God from putting forth his grace and power, when Christ shall take his place on his own throne, instead of being, as now, seated on the throne of his Father? Rev. 3:20. The objection is the less reasonable, because Dr. B. cannot dispute the fact that Christ was not thus a Priest in Old Testament times—had not entered into heaven by his own blood—had not yet obtained eternal redemption for any. If then the Old Testament saints were saved in spite of this lack, why not the millennial saints? If the credit of it, when it did not exist, sufficed for the one class, why not for the other? In fact, it is not that the millennial saints will be without his priesthood, but only that its form will be changed. “He shall be a priest upon his throne.” So that the difference is really in favor of these saints, as compared with those of the Old Testament.

The fallacy as to the work of the Spirit is equally palpable. John 7:38, 39; 14:16, 17, 26; 15:26; 16:7, 14; Acts 2:33; Titus 3:5, 6; Rev. 3:1, and 5:6, are the texts cited. But granting that the Holy Ghost may not be given in the way in which most of these Scriptures speak, that was as true of the times before the first ad vent as it can be after the second. If, in spite of this, the Holy Ghost did work for saving purposes in those early days (when he was not given in a full New Testament way, because that Jesus was not yet glorified), why not in the last days, when Jesus is manifested in all his glories?

The argument, therefore, is weak to excess, and even absurd. The fact is, that the millennial saints will enjoy an outpouring of the Spirit suited to the magnificent purposes of God in those days of which Pentecost was but a sample. This will be plain to the unbiassed reader of Joel 2, with its context, of Isa. 32; 44; 49; Ezek. 36; 37 and Zech. 12; 14.

Thus, the argument in connection with these three propositions entirely fails. For it does not follow that when Christ and the Church appear in glory, the work of salvation will terminate Nor is it Scriptural, nor even logical, to assert that none will be saved when the New Testament “sealing ordinances” disappear; for beyond doubt many were saved before these ordinances appeared. All the objects of the Scripture will not be exhausted, because the special design of this dispensation is accomplished. Finally, Christ will still be Priest, and the Spirit be more than ever poured out after the completion of the Church and of this age. In every part, therefore, Dr. B. is singular and hopelessly astray; and some of his arguments go far to strengthen the system which he desires to oppose and overthrow, in particular the peculiarity of the church and of the present dispensation, and a millennium governed by different principles and characterized by mercies of another order.

The Premillennial Advent: 5. The Kingdom

If our object were the exposure of errors and contradictions in the scheme of our adversaries, no part perhaps could be found more fertile than the question of Christ's kingdom. But this would be disingenuous; for the province is so vast, and its boundaries in general so ill-defined in the minds of most Christians, that abundant scope presents itself for hostile criticism within the ranks of premillennialists. Dr. B. has, not unnaturally, taken advantage of the confusion, and seemingly with the most complete unconsciousness that it is “worse confounded” in his own statements. We shall try to steer as clear as may be of the same danger, though forced to show briefly how little the popular view can lay claim to accuracy or comprehensiveness.

Nor is our task difficult; for the scriptural account is simple enough. The Lord Jesus was born King of the Jews. Matt. 1 gives His genealogy as the Son of David, the Son of Abraham: Matt. 2. His recognition by the heaven-directed Magi, as the predicted ruler of Israel. But if He was there for His people, they were unready for Him His star was no bright harbinger, save to the distant Gentile; His birth no joy, save to the despised of men: not only was the false King, the Edomite, troubled, but “all Jerusalem with him”! What a welcome for the newborn King! Alas! all followed true to the sad beginning, by growing false to Him around whose head prophecy and miracle, grace and truth, circled for a crown of testimony and blessing, such as man had never worn. Blinded by self and Satan, the Jews saw no beauty in Him who was a Savior as well as King, who could not, would not, reign, when His people needed to be saved from their sins. They were wrong, not intellectually alone, but morally. The chief priests and scribes of the people could answer correctly, and without hesitation, where the Messiah should be born. About His kingdom, too, they had no difficulty, though doubtless little true light; but a Messiah lifted up from the earth was to them an insoluble enigma, and a deadly stone of stumbling. “We have heard out of the law that Christ abideth forever: and how sayest thou, The Son of man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of man?” They were not mistaken in what they imagined the ancient prophets had foretold; but their carnal minds used one part of the revealed truth to contradict another equally true, and yet more vital. It is obvious and undeniable that the law does teach the perpetuity of the Son of man and His kingdom; no subsequent revelations rescind, deny, or modify this. So far the Jews were right, and our friends are wrong. But a rejected and suffering Messiah was foreshown with no less clearness; and why was such an one excluded from their faith? Why did they look for His glory without His sorrows and His death? Because they had no adequate sense of their sins, nor of God's holy majesty; because instinctively they turned away from what is most humbling to man, and as tenaciously clung to that which might aggrandize their place and nation. Cain-like, they brought their offering to God: why should He not accept it? It was their best. Ah! in His sight it was their worst, and could only end in His cross, who proved that self-complacent race to be but a viper-brood, whose sin was unconfessed, unatoned for; and God cannot overlook that, however easily man may. Jesus can save His people, suffer for them, and forgive to the uttermost; but reign over them in their sins He will not. And Jesus was not Messiah only: He was Emmanuel, God manifest in the flesh, with all its solemnly blessed consequences for faith, with its distastefulness then and its terrors by and by for unbelief. Man likes not God: hence the rejection of Jesus.

It was not, then, a false inference from the ancient prophets, that the Son of David was to bless Israel and exalt Jerusalem, though doubtless on a holier foundation and pattern than their dark hearts were prepared for. “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a king shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In His days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely; and this is His name whereby He shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS. Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that they shall no more say, the Lord liveth which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; but the Lord liveth which brought up and which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all countries whither I had driven thee; and they shall dwell in their own land.” (Jer. 23:5-8.) “And the sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee: for in my wrath I smote thee” (which is true of the earthly Jerusalem, not of the heavenly), “but in my favor have I had mercy on thee. Therefore thy gates shall be open continually: they shall not be shut day nor night; that men may bring unto thee the forces of the Gentiles, and that their kings may be brought. For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted.” (Isa. 60:10-12.) This is, beyond a doubt, not the holy city which comes down from heaven with healing for the nations, but the earthly city—holy, but earthly—the vessel of mercy, but withal the minister of righteous retribution here below in the day of the Lord.

It was not so much there that the blindness of Israel lay, but in this, that they saw not, heard not, God in Jesus. His kingdom was in their midst when Jesus was there, delivering from the thralldom of the enemy. “If I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you.” (Matt. 12:28.) “Behold the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21.) This they believed not; and that fatal error led them on, under Satan's guidance, to the place which is called Calvary; and there, in His crucifixion, they proclaimed to God and man how they esteemed Him who was wounded for their transgressions, and bruised for their iniquities. Their rock of shipwreck was the exaltation of themselves in their then state, and their consequent refusal of Him who came to bless them, in turning away every one of them from their iniquities: not their expectation of His Davidical kingdom, but their exclusion of redemption, and their virtual denial of its need.

For our part, we fear something painfully akin, not externally, but in the core, pervades Christendom, and strongly tends to keep up the prevalent unbelief as to the true nature, objects, issues, and of course the time of the Lord's Advent. For men not unreasonably fear and dislike a coming of Christ in sudden judgment of what they are pursuing with eagerness. And even Christians who mingle with the literature, the philosophy, and the politics of the world, are apt to get tinctured more or less with the spirit of the age. Let them remember how the promise of a returning glorious Christ was to face with the last-day scoffers, Forgetfulness of this exposes one to the expectation unauthorized by scripture, of a gradually victorious reign of the gospel, instead of God's testimony to the gospel of the reign. This is accompanied by (if it does not create) the thought that the godly need not suffer persecution, but rather and rightfully expect a share of this world's respect and honors and influence, as their hoped-for millennium draws near. Thus they prophesy smooth things for their children, yet more than for themselves—a proximate triumph for the Church, in Christ's absence, on earth, instead of waiting for the appearing of both in heavenly glory, whereby the world shall know that the Father sent the Son, and loved the Church as He loved Him.

It is not denied, that “the kingdom of heaven” began with the ascension. Nothing can be more perversely untrue than that premillennialism obscures or weakens this. On the contrary, none have derived so much light as pre-millennialists from Matt. 13, which is the grand exhibition of the kingdom in this aspect, and during the present dispensation. Here they and their opponents necessarily take common ground against unbelieving Jews. But then it is a peculiar and anomalous aspect of the kingdom; not the predicted manifestation of divine power, when the evil shall be put down in this world, and the good shall dwell at ease, but “the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 13:11.) It is a wholly different thing which we find in the prophets, though confessedly both are states of the kingdom. Thus, if we look at “the little stone” in Dan. 2, it is beyond legitimate question that it symbolizes the dominion entrusted to the Lord Jesus. It is cut without hands (i.e., without human agency). It is “in the days of these kings:” not, as has been assumed, and upon no substantial grounds, “during the currency of the four famous kingdoms” (for the last only is supposed to be subsisting imperially); but in the days of the ten kings just intimated by the toes of the great image; precisely as in Dan. 7, we have the closing history of the fourth empire followed by a solemn session of judgment, and the investiture of one like the Son of Man in presence of the Ancient of days. Both manifestly exclude the ascension, which is entirely passed over here, as is the Lord's stay and work on earth; both show the time in question to be during, and in reference to, the last form of the anti-Christian Roman empire before its destruction. With this all coheres. For the first action of the stone is judgment. There is no mere spiritual or moral influence which acts on the heart set forth here, but a direct and judicial demolition of the last human empire which is seen on earth. It is not the slow and checkered sowing of the gospel seed, often caught away, dying off, or choked up; neither is it some grand development ever and anon absorbing its enemies into its own substance or body. It is a grand display of divine force, which suddenly and utterly destroys the existing imperial power, with all that remained of its predecessors, before it becomes a mountain and fills the whole earth. No such idea appears in the passage as “the now existing church” (Brown, p. 322), “fighting and winning its way to the throne of the world” (id., p. 321); which is indeed a dream worthy of Papists or Mormons, not the truth as it is in Jesus. Dr. B.'s view (and it is the common one) subverts the entire teaching of the New Testament as to our right relations to the kingdoms of this world, and therefore must be rejected, not merely as erroneous interpretation of a prophecy, but as unsound and mischievous doctrine. It denies the essentially subject and suffering place of the Christian on earth; and, if practically carried out, would degrade the Church into an organized system of rebellion against the powers that be, at least in their anti-Christian principles and character—a conspiracy consecrated under the plea that the kingdoms of this world are themselves conspirators against the interests and the people of God here below.

No! the more we reflect, the more are we satisfied that no Jesuit, no Hildebrand even, would ask more sanction for their ambitious schemes than Dr. B. concedes in the following words: “Christ's presently existing kingdom has within itself the whole resources by which it is destined to crush the anti-Christianism that obstructs its universal triumph, and to win its way to the throne of the world” (p. 319). He may guard his thought as much as he will; he may tell us that, as a mere succession of civil monarchies, the vision has nothing to do with them; he may say that the fall of those anti-Christian kingdoms can only be considered their fall in the character of hostility to the Church of the living God, But Cardinal Wiseman justifies the projects of Rome on precisely similar principles, with equal claim, as far as expounding the prophecy goes, and with greater ability. And such are the inevitable consequences, be it observed, of the attempt to apply the ordinary notion of Christ's kingdom to the exposition of Dan. 2.

While it is true, then, that the kingdom of heaven is going on now, it must be carefully remembered that its present form is mysterious and special, because of Israel's unbelief and rejection of the Lord. This is what we find fully brought out in the Gospel of Matthew. In consequence of the people's refusing the King, He goes on high, and the anomaly appears of the kingdom, entrusted to the responsibility of man, proceeding in patience, and not enforced by power; so that if tares are sown by the enemy and seen growing in the wheat-field, there is to be no gathering of them until the harvest, when angels do that work. Such is the form and character of the kingdom presented in the New Testament—long-suffering grace on the part of Christ's servants towards evildoers, falsely professing His name. It is not a question of church discipline, to which it has been often and monstrously perverted, but of conduct towards the evil in the field (“the world”), where they are on principle to be let alone, mingling with the children of the kingdom till the end of this age (not of the next or millennial age, where a totally different state of things is found, and a different principle governs). In the end of THIS age the Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity. That is to say, the form and character of the kingdom will change, judgment shall be executed on the wicked then alive (instead of grace bearing with them as now), and the righteous shall shine forth then, instead of groaning within themselves, as now. Judgment shall return unto righteousness in that day, and this publicly, manifestly, under the Son of Man. Hence in Daniel, where we have the normal aspect of the kingdom, there is the execution of judgment as its introductory act here below: as indeed it is the chief, though not exclusive, feature of the millennial reign, and everywhere so presented in the word of God.

The reader may now judge how far scripture is the source or sanction of Dr. B.'s fifth proposition— “Christ's proper kingdom is already in being; commencing formally on His ascension to the right hand of God, and continuing unchanged both in character and form, till the final judgment” (p. 124). Satan may still reign the prince of this world; creation may still groan, subject to vanity; all that live godly in Christ Jesus may still suffer persecution; the Jews may still cry, “Not this man but Barabbas;” the Gentiles may never so much boast, and never so little stand in God's goodness: yet is it, according to Dr. B., Christ's proper kingdom! Satan may be bound, and creation delivered into the liberty of glory; the saints that suffered first may reign with Christ; the Jews may say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord, and the Gentiles may rejoice with them: nevertheless, according to Dr. B., the kingdom continues “unchanged both in character and form.” Now there is tribulation, then there will be none; now there are wars, then it will be learned no more; now the gospel is being preached to all as a testimony, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile, then (at least in Israel) “they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for they shall all know me.” No matter, according to Dr. B., “the extent is nothing. The principle is the only thing of consequence, and who does not see that that is the same in both cases?” (p. 368.) it is “Christ's proper kingdom,” and it continues unchanged, both in character and form, till the final judgment!! Such is Dr. B.'s principle, and these are some of its consequences.

But we must glance at the evidence:—(.1) Acts 2:29-36, compared with Zech. 6:12, 13; Rev. 5:6; 3:7, 8-13; and Isa. 9:7. (2) Acts 3:19, 13-15 —21. (3) Acts 4:26-28. (4) Acts 5:29-31. (5) Psa. 110:1, compared with Heb. 10:12, 13; and 1 Cor. 15:24-26. These passages are employed by Dr. B. to show that the apostles take up precisely his “position against the pre-millennialists regarding the kingdom of Christ” (p. 128). These are bold words.

How are they made good? (1) Peter's arguments prove that Christ was the risen Messiah; that His death, and resurrection, and session at the right hand of God, were predicted, as well as His right to the throne of David. This we accept as cordially as Dr. B. Not a particle of this was believed by the incredulous Jews, with whom he associates his premillennialist brethren. But he further maintains that the Pentecostal mission of the Spirit was Christ's first exercise of royal authority from the throne of Israel. “That CHRIST IS NOW ON DAVID'S THRONE, is as clearly affirmed by Peter in this sermon as words could do it” (p. 130). We, on the other hand, maintain not only that there is not one word to this effect, but that Christ's ascension is expressly distinguished from his Davidical title. Three separate Psalms are cited or referred to in proof of three distinct glories of Christ: Psa. 16 as indicating Christ's resurrection; Psa. 132 God's oath touching David's throne; and Psa. 11.0 His session on Jehovah's throne in heaven, which, as the apostle argues, was no more true of David than the resurrection of Psa. 16. This, then, affords not proof, but disproof: the Father's throne above is not the throne of David or of Israel, as men most singularly make out of Peter's words. So, as to Zech. 6; 12:13, (though it is quite lawful for us to appropriate very much that is blessed in it,) it supposes a time yet future, when “he shall be a priest upon his throne:” the regular and formal fulfillment of the prophecy, and indeed of the kingdom; not the mystery of His present place on the Father's throne, Rev. 3:20. The possession of David's key applied figuratively in Rev. 3:7 is an extraordinary witness to call, seeing that it pertained not to the king, but to his subject and servant. David's throne is quite another thought. As to understanding Isa. 9:7 of “the administration of Christ in the church,” we can only say that, as interpretation, whether one looks at the text or its context, it is a sense which is destitute, to our mind, of the smallest probability. The passage supposes unprecedented vengeance executed, and the government carried out on principles of righteousness.

(2) “Prince of life” we deny in toto to be the same as sitting on the throne of David. It seems to us a singular instance of a pre-occupied mind that such a title should be cited in proof of a force so distant from its own proper meaning. Again, Dr. B. is quite wrong in asserting that “pre-millennialists tell us that Christ's second coming must precede the conversion of the Jews.” Some, no doubt, have so thought, but by no means all. We ourselves agree with Dr. B. that the reverse appears here, as, indeed, we may add, from our Lord's own words, “Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh,” etc. Their heart must be touched so to say, and so they shall say before they see the Lord. But Dr. B. has no warrant for adding, that on their conversion, “and events then hastening on apace,” He would send again to the earth your predicted Messiah. This interpretation is, we presume, to gain more time, and so far postpone the coming of Christ. Further, Dr. B. says, in reference to “till the times of restitution,” “the sense plainly is, that whatever the things predicted be, they are to be accomplished ere Christ comes; and that certainly will not be before the millennium.” But this is to miss the point. If the grand theme of all the prophets had been the great white throne (Rev. 20) and the subsequent eternal state, there might be force in what he says; for in that case Christ's coming would be connected with the end of the millennium. But since all the prophets dwell, not on the final scene, but on the millennial times of blessing and righteousness, it follows that Christ's coming is bound up with those times, not with their end or what follows; that is, the passage tells decisively for pre-millenarianism and against Dr. B., notwithstanding good Joseph Perry's convictions.

The apostolic use of Psa. 2 in Acts 4 is the next argument. “They apply the Psalm, beyond all contradiction, to the present sovereignty and rule of Jesus in the heavens.” (p. 140.) But it is clearly used, not to prove or illustrate the nature of Christ's kingdom, but solely as predictive of the world's opposition to God and His anointed servant. Unquestionably much of the Psalm was not accomplished; it cannot thence be assumed that Christ was actually reigning in Zion; and other scriptures show that He is not yet.

Still less plausible is the use made of Acts 5:29-31. What the Jews did not believe was that Jesus of Nazareth was the predicted Savior-Prince, and that salvation could only be through His cross. The word here translated “Prince” does not express regal dignity, but a “leader” or “captain,” as in Heb. 2 and 12. Further, it is His title in relation here to Israel (presented to their responsibility then. and by and by to be accepted through the grace of God); not a word is hinted about Christ's actual relation to the Church, which is our author's thesis.

(5) Neither does Psalm ex. I help Dr. B., nor do the comments on it in Acts 2; Heb. 10; and 1 Cor. 15 Sitting at Jehovah's right hand is rather in contrast with the exercise of His Davidical throne, as we have seen in Acts 2 Heb. 10 uses the fact of His seat there to show the work perfect and finished, instead of being always a-doing, as with the Jewish priest. It would rather prove that Christ was not ruling in the midst of His enemies. He is expecting till His enemies be made His footstool. When he reigns in the sense of Psa. 90 the enemy will have been made His footstool. In Heb. 10 He has completed His offering for His friends; henceforth He waits for another thing, viz., vengeance upon His enemies; and this “the kingdom,” in the full and literal sense of the term, is to witness. “Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kindgom to God, even the father For he must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet.”

Dr. B. urges, as to this, the discrepancies of premillennialists; but, after all, what do they amount to? A mere difference in the application of a particular verse or clause in 1 Cor. 15 Some hold that the kingdom delivered up means the kingdom as now going on in mystery; others, and we believe more correctly, the proper and future kingdom of Christ. On this Dr. B. triumphs without reason. He conceives that you have only to combine the separate statements (that “the kingdom” is in being with the one, and that it is the full Davidical reign of Christ with the other) to overthrow both classes of antagonists, and establish his own system. But it is plain, as Mr. Birks well observes, (“Outlines,” p. 203,) that the same mode of argument may be used with equal success to establish any one of the conflicting theories by premises derived from the others. If we assume, with Dr. B., that the Davidical reign is clearly intended, and with Dr. McNeile, that that reign is future, the result is premillennialism as commonly held. Again, if we agree with Dr. B. that the reign here mentioned is begun, and with Dr. McN. that the Davidical reign is future, premillennialism follows equally. “Nothing, then, can be more illusive than this ad captandum style of reasoning, which would extract, from the admissions of two different sets of opponents, their common refutation.”

The Premillennial Advent: 6. The First Resurrection and the Second Death

Our purpose is, as briefly as may be consistent with perspicuity, to examine the arguments put forth by Dr. Brown in support of his sixth and seventh propositions, which are as follows: -

“When Christ comes, the whole Church of God will be 'made alive' at once—the dead by resurrection, and the living, immediately thereafter, by transformation; their mortality being swallowed up of life.” (p. 164).

“All the wicked will rise from the dead, or be made alive, at the coming of Christ.” (p. 178).

First of all, he opens with justly reprobating the painfully repulsive notion held by a few writers, that there is to be a succession of living generations upon the earth throughout all eternity. In denouncing this monstrous idea we are happy to agree with Dr. B., and so, we are persuaded, do the mass of godly and intelligent premillennialists. The fallacy depends on taking “forever,” Sic., absolutely in all cases, instead of interpreting such phrases relatively to the context. Possibly our author may be right in conjecturing that its advocates were hurried into it through the gap which premillennialism leaves touching the ultimate destiny of the righteous who live on earth during the thousand years. For our part we frankly own that, as far as we see, scripture is reserved about this as about many other points. If the Bible furnishes specific information about it, let the passages be produced, and we are as willing to bow to them as our opponents. The general principle of God's word is clear, necessary, and unchanging, that corruption cannot inherit incorruption; that when the everlasting state comes (the new heavens and earth in the fullest sense), the former things are passed away; that He who sits on the throne says, “Behold, I make all things new.” The men with whom God's tabernacle is said then to be (Rev. 21:3), we believe to be the saved men that had lived in the millennial earth; and if all the things around them are renovated, a fortiori so are they. “And God shall wipe all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain.” This had been partially true in the millennium, but it is perfectly true now. We are not told when their bodies were changed into this new condition, nor is any account given how they were translated into the eternal world where righteousness dwells. We know the fact; and if this was enough for God to reveal, it ought to satisfy Dr. B., as it does ourselves. If post-millennialism ventures to fill up the picture and to describe the when and the how these millennial saints are changed and translated, it will be found that the system runs before and against the scriptures. If pre-millennialism holds its peace, it is because the mouth of the Lord has not spoken upon the details; and in such a case, who are the wiser, the humbler and the truer men? Surely those who prefer the silence of the Lord to the loudest and most confident utterance of men. We accept, then, with Dr. B., the scriptural principle and the general fact of the everlasting condition of the saints who had lived during the millennium: with him, also, we reject the revolting Adamism which some dead and living pre-millenialists have expected to exist throughout eternity; but we repudiate, as less revolting, no doubt, but as equally unscriptural, Dr. B.'s scheme, which pretends to determine the time and manner of the change which affects the millennial saints. If it be urged that he includes those saints in the whole Church of God made alive when Christ comes, the answer is, that this is simply to affirm what we emphatically deny; and the burden of proof falls, of course, upon him. Dr. B. has not proved it, and we venture to say that he cannot. His theory is a mere begging of the question.

He cites, indeed, for one simultaneous and glorious resurrection, 1 Cor. 15:20-23; John 6:39, 40; 17:9, 24 (i.e., the passages produced in his chap. 4 to show the completeness of the Church at Christ's coming, which no one doubts). The true inquiry is, whether scripture does not leave room for the blessing of other men on earth after the proper Church-work is done. Let Dr. B. ponder John 11:51, 52, for instance. Is it not plain that we are there taught the efficacy of Christ's death for the Jewish nation, and not for this only, but that also He should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad? That is, we have the Lord's death announced formally for Israel and for Christians, as for two distinct objects. The Apocalypse, like Old Testament scriptures, exhibits the blessing which results from it to the millennial nations, yea, to the universe itself, as the latter point is stated doctrinally in Ephesians and Colossians. Dr. B. ought to have applied the scriptures cited to those actually contemplated in the respective passages, without going farther and excluding what is revealed elsewhere. The Lord and His apostle, in Dr. B.'s quotations, address and intend the class of heavenly sufferers only. Whether there be others redeemed and saved in another state of things (i.e., the millennium) cannot be settled one way or another by these scriptures, because they refer exclusively to pre-millennial times. In point of fact, 1 Cor. 15:20-23, and John 6:39, 40, could not apply to the millennial saints, because those texts speak of raising the dead, and these saints are never said to die, and therefore come under the “change,” not resurrection. And John 17 seems to us an unhappy chapter for a post-millenarian to quote, because it is through the heavenly and glorified saints, that the world is to know that the Father sent the Son. That is, there are others undoubtedly so influenced by this glorious unity as to recognize the Lord—a strange proof that themselves are already included in this unity. It is really a very strong proof of what Dr. B. objects to. In his scheme there is no world which could thus and then learn the Father's mission of the Son, when the risen or changed saints appear with Christ in glory.

Upon the closing and supplementary remarks of chap. 7, which aim at overthrowing Dr. H. Bonar's use of Isa. 25:8, we need not enter; partly because we differ somewhat from the argument, and chiefly because we have already rested the co-existence of earthly and heavenly blessing and glory during the millennium upon other proofs.

As for the Socinians and Dutch Remonstrants (p. 181, who employed Luke 14 Cor. 15, and 1 Thess. 4, to deny any resurrection for the wicked), it may be “interesting” to those who eke out the feebleness of their cause and their reasoning by puny appeals in terrorem; but we doubt how far it will “strengthen” Dr. B.'s remarks. He concedes that this group of passages does “imply that believers rise ALONE; that is, on a principle peculiar to themselves, and in a company amongst whom the wicked are not found.” Besides, it is utterly false that the same answer suffices for his pre-millennialist brethren now, as for the Socinianizing party: because the last denied and the former hold strenuously, and more distinctly than the soi-disant orthodox divines, a resurrection of the unjust.

But Phil. 3:11 receives from Dr. B., and claims from us, a fuller notice. “It was a resurrection peculiar to believers—a resurrection exclusively theirs—exclusive, however, not in the time of it, but in its nature, its accompaniments, and its issues” (p. 183). Moreover, he acknowledges that the preferable reading is (not the vulgar ἐζανάστασιν τῶν νεκρῶν, but what, since Bengel, and in spite of Griesbach, “has been established”) ἐζανάστασιν τῶν έκ νεκρῶν. This, we venture to affirm, is the strongest possible statement in Greek of an eclectic resurrection. “The out-resurrection from the dead” may convey some idea of its force to the unlearned reader. It is even more emphatic, as Bengel observes, than the word used of our Lord's rising from the dead. The main question, however, is on the latter part of the phrase. Is le venpety ever predicated of the resurrection of the wicked dead, of those who, as we believe, rise last? NEVER. Ἀνάστασις νεκρῶν is, of course, true of Christ, and of the righteous, no less than of the wicked; for all that it means is the rising again of dead persons. This, then, is in not the smallest degree favorable to Dr. B., as he inconsiderately infers, On the other hand, the phrase ἐκ νεκρῶν is restricted to Christ and His saints; because this resurrection (whether of Him or of them) was from among the dead, who were left for the time undisturbed by it in their graves—a prior, as well as a peculiar, resurrection. Nor is there the least difficulty in discerning why Paul chose the more general expression in 1 Cor. 15 though he there confines himself (as Dr. B. believes with us, in opposition to Mark Birks, Barnes, &c.) to the resurrection of Christ and of them who are Christ's. The reason is because he is asserting the abstract doctrine of resurrection, which some of the Corinthians, though holding the perpetuity of the soul, had denied. But the apostle insists on the resurrection of dead persons—of the body. He shows that to question this is to destroy alike the foundation in Christ and the hopes of the Christian—the grand motives to, and power of, present holy suffering. Can Dr. B. refuse this explanation of his objection? If not, the argument founded on the distinctness of the Greek formulas is thoroughly sound and conclusive. Neither is there ambiguity in the phrase ἐκ νεκρῶν: it means “out of,” or “from amongst the dead,” not “from the place or state of the dead.” Mark Inglis's criticism on Heb. 11:19 (preface, 6, 7), founded on ὅθεν, “whence,” as if it necessarily meant the dead state, is quite inept; because, the expression being figurative (ἐν παραβολη), “out of dead persons” yields a sense just as good as its rival. Like the Latin uncle, this Greek adverb means not only “whence,” but front whom or which, and this, not in mere loose and barbarized dialects, but in the purest Attic authors. Mr. L's remarks ignore this (being founded on the mistaken idea that ὅθεν can only mean whence, and only be applied to the dead state), and therefore, if ingenious, must forfeit claim to accuracy.

Dan. 12:2, if it treat of a literal bodily resurrection, is decidedly opposed to Dr. B., because it makes it immediately succeed the great conflicts in Palestine, which most certainly are before, not after the millennium. The Gog and Magog insurrection (in Rev. 20) is too distinct to need discussion. We do not doubt that it is borrowed from the resurrection of just and unjust, which it supposes to be a known truth; but it is a figure to express the resuscitation of Israel, just as in Ezek. 37, Hos. 6; 13, and many other Old Testament scriptures. In John 5:28, 29, we have the Lord's testimony to two resurrections, a life-resurrection and a judgment-resurrection, both comprehended in an hour that is coming Dr. B. deduces simultaneousness, we distinctness, of the two, be the interval short or long. That the word does not of necessity imply shortness, the context just before proves unanswerably. But, answers Dr. B., the unbroken continuousness of the period is essential; and, in that case, a long continuity of resurrection in both kinds would be involved (pp. 191-194). We reply that ὥρα (“hour”) has nothing to do with the continuity of facts occurring in it, but with the unity of the epoch, so as to make one time or season of it. Thus it is used for a year; yet spring and summer, autumn and winter, seed-time and harvest, very opposite and not continuous facts, occur in it. If, in the case before us, the hour derived its character from the resurrection, the whole argument is unfounded; for there are two resurrections opposed in. character, and no continuity is derived from them. If it does not derive its character from the resurrection, then the fact of its having two resurrections in it, a thousand years apart, does not destroy its continuity. Two periods were in the first “hour” (ver. 25), characterized by Christ's presence and His absence. There was an epoch when souls should rise at the voice of the Son of God; there was another (ver. 28) when bodies should rise. This hour derives its unity, not continuity, from something else. What gave that unity is another question, to which, we believe, the true answer is the presence of the Lord in glory, in that power in which He rose from the dead. They were not to marvel if He quickened souls, for at a future epoch He would manifest His power in raising all that are in the graves, and this in resurrections as contrasted as “life” and a “judgment.”

This distinction, it is notorious, reappears in Rev. 20; only that in the prophecy we have, as might be expected, the contrast of time, as well as of character. A chronological period of a thousand years, or more, separates the two resurrections, but their identification with John 5 is palpable. Rev. 20; 4:6, describes the life-resurrection— “they lived and reigned with Christ. On such the second death hath no power.” Rev. 20, 12 to the end, describes the judgment-resurrection— “The dead were judged out of those things,” &c., “They were judged every man according to his works.”

As to the argument for universality, based on the phrase, “the dead, small and great,” it will not stand a moment's investigation; because the wicked are the only dead left. In immediate juxtaposition with the account in verse 4 of the various classes who share in the first resurrection, it is said, “the rest of the dead lived not.” But now, when the thousand years are over, when the last fruitless rebellion of the nations, led on by Satan and dealt with summarily by divine judgment, has added a countless throng to the mass of the dead, all are summoned up from their graves to stand before the throne. Here there is neither need nor room for describing them as “the rest of the dead,” because of the interval which separates them from the first resurrection. Nay, more; “the rest of the dead,” in verse 12, would have been a misleading and improper phrase, because it might naturally have been restricted to the same body of whom verse 5 had spoken: whereas in fact it includes ALL the dead, except those already disposed of in the first resurrection; not those only who were dead when the millennial reign began, but such as had died during its course, and the vast multitude whom fire from God devoured at its close. Nothing can be plainer. A blessed resurrection is first described of those who reign with Christ, and with this is expressly conjoined the statement that the rest of the dead lived not till a certain long period terminated. During this period we know, from Isa. 65; 66, that, at least, the wicked die; and at the end of it, we know, from Rev. 20; 7-9, that the living wicked are destroyed without remedy. Most appropriately, therefore, on our view, scripture speaks of those called up afterward for the judgment-resurrection as “the dead, small and great,” —the largest and most precise possible terms, so as to embrace all that remain, who are necessarily all wicked. The righteous had been long since raised. After that, no righteous are ever intimated as dying. No matter how comprehensive, then, may be the phraseology employed, it can only apply to the wicked, because they only, at that epoch, are “the dead.” The minute specification of the sea, death, and hades, is most solemn. No hiding-place could longer detain the wretched victims of sin. The deepest gulfs of the sea and unseen worlds deliver up their prisoners to stand before the Judge. And as to the production of “the book of life,” and “the books,” it is quite simple. Here is a figure (for, indeed, the description of the second death is just as symbolical as that of the first resurrection)—a figure taken from human tribunals and from two sides of an account. The books prove that their works were evil. The book of life discloses that their names were not written therein; for not a hint is given of even one who was. Both agree that they should be cast into the lake of fire.

Not content with his general remarks upon Rev. 20, Dr. B. devotes his entire chap. 9 to certain presumptions and nine internal evidences against the literality of the first resurrection. His is prim i probabilities are of no weight:-1. It is true that the duration of the interval between the two resurrections is only mentioned six times in one passage of the Apocalypse; but surely this was abundant testimony to the number of years which should separate them, one clear revelation being as certain as one hundred. Besides, we have already demonstrated, that the term “resurrection from (or, from among) the dead,” which is restricted to the resurrection of Christ and His saints, implies in both cases a prior resurrection. What can be plainer than these words, for example, “They which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that age (αἰῶνος), and the resurrection from the dead (ρῆς ἀν. τῆς ἐκ νεκρῶν), neither marry nor are given in marriage; neither can they die any more; for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.” We do not wonder that Dr. B. has found it convenient to evade the discussion of this striking testimony, and only refers to its existence in the notes to pp. 181 and 186. But the reader will see that, among the dead, none but the worthy, the children of God, are to obtain that age—that special and long-expected age, when God shall fulfill His blessed promises in all their precision, as well as all their breadth and compass. For such, as far as concerns the dead, are reserved “that age and the resurrection from the dead.”

“The rest of the dead” are not to live till that age has run its course, and the resurrection FROM the dead is no longer possible. “And I saw the dead, small and great and the dead were judged.” The wicked dead are excluded from that age no less than from the resurrection from the dead. The truth is that an indiscriminate resurrection (p. 260) is totally unknown to scripture, and the reasoning goes much farther than the millennium. All scripture which speaks of resurrection shows a distinct act, if there be only a minute between. Those who are Christ's are never confounded with the rest, whatever the interval (which is naturally made known in a prophecy, that is peculiarly rich in times and seasons, days and years). 2. We utterly reject the assertion that Rev. 20:4-6 is an ambiguous revelation. People may have made mistakes about the extent of its subjects; but the thing itself has been clearly held even by men as eccentric as Mr. Burgh. And Dr. B. forgets that all premillennialists differ from his opinion of the subjects of the final resurrection, and most of them from his view of its character and results. 3. His last presumption, viz., that any other description of the resurrection of the saints is catholic, while this is limited, is a mere but decided blunder. Dr. B. omits the first clause of Rev. 20:4 (“And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them”). Having thus decapitated the verse, having deprived it of a clause which, in our judgment, was purposely written in the most general form, so as to take in the saints of the Old and New Testaments, no wonder that he finds in the rest only disjecta membra. But then the mutilation is his own deed, as will be seen more fully by and by. At the same time we must do our author the justice to say that he discards the old objections, grounded on “souls” (not bodies) being named, on the want of particular mention of the earth, as the theater of the millennial reign, and on the word resurrection, as if it did not denote the restoring of life to the dead.

His nine arguments admit of distinct and conclusive refutation Dr. B. reasons that “this is the first resurrection” “seems to be figurative, because contrasted with the second death.” Why, it is hard even to imagine. The first death is the wages of sin in this world, the second death is the full and final wages hereafter. Dr. B. has overlooked the fact that both are explanations, and not the symbols to be explained. If the two deaths are literal, though they may differ, the two resurrections may differ, but are equally literal.

We are almost ashamed to speak of the objection to the clause “on such the second death hath no power,” taking for granted that the first resurrection is literal. “Is it likely,” says Dr. B., “that the Spirit of God means nothing more here than such a truism?” Such hypercriticism would make fearful carnage of the living word of God. It is the habitual way, especially in the psalms and prophets, of causing the reader to pause and ponder well their comforts or their warnings. Dr. B. will scarcely deny the parallelistic structure which pervades the scripture, and not least the Apocalypse. Nor is anything more common than to mark doubly what was meant to impress the soul, i.e. both positively and negatively, as here. “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power.” The second death is so awful a reality as to make God's gracious assurance of exemption from it anything but a needless repetition. “Indeed, (says Mr. Birks, p. 116,) the words are a distinct proof that the resurrection is literal. For the second death is never named except with reference to a first death which has gone before it. The church of Smyrna is the only one which receives the command, 'Be thou faithful unto death;' and hence it receives the special promise, 'he that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.' It is not to saints as living, but as having suffered death, or about to suffer it, that exemption from the second death is promised. This character does not apply to millennial believers, who are exempt from the first death during its continuance, but applies fully to the martyrs, and indeed to all believers who have died in the faith before the Lord comes.”

There are but two alternatives in this prophecy, says Dr. B.—the first resurrection, or the second death. Into which are we to put the millennial myriads? Into neither, as far as the millennial saints are concerned, who, not dying, will not rise, but be changed doubtless. The rest, dying before, or destroyed in the Gog and Magog insurrection, will be cast into the lake of fire. On Dr. B.'s view, the blessing is reduced to the character of the millennium as one of prevailing spiritual life: but thus, as another remarks, all the emphasis is lost, since believers in any age are blessed and holy, and are equally exempted from the power of the second death.

The limitation of the reign to 1000 years is no difficulty. Rev. 22 shows that the book recognizes the reigning forever and ever, while Rev. 20 takes up the reigning for a special purpose which has an end.

V. The next difficulty, viz., that the rest of the dead do not rise immediately on the expiry of the thousand years, but after the little season beyond, is weaker still. It is nowhere tied to that moment; it could not be before—that is all. On the other hand, there is a difference in the way Satan's period is spoken of—μετὰ ταῦτα δ. αὐ. λ. μ. χ. This formula does connect the loosing of Satan with the close of the thousand years, but it is nowhere used of the resurrection of the rest of the dead. The truth, therefore, is against Dr. B. and his colleague in the British Quarterly.

VI, VII. These are merely the arguments reasoned by Mr. Gipps, on the opening of the book of life, and on the sea, death, and hades delivering up their dead, only in connection with the great white throne, not with the first resurrection. But we have already replied enough on these heads to show that they are appropriate where they are, rather than elsewhere, on the literal scheme. Besides, a book is not like a seal which can be opened but once; and here, say what Dr. B. will, it is connected solely with those not found in it. The other images are not of blessedness, but of trouble, sorrow, &c., and therefore are fitly joined with the wicked.

The next objection to the literal sense is that it is exclusively a martyr scene. But this is simply to repeat the mistake of the third presumption. Dr. B. objects to Mr. Elliott's way of stating the case, that he makes John to specify particularly, as conspicuous among those seen seated on thrones, the martyrs and confessors; whereas, according to his own interpretation, they only are seen. The fact is, that Mr. E. has understated the matter. For the beheaded saints, and those who refused the beast's overtures, are two classes added to those who were already seen enthroned. The apostle saw certain thrones filled, and judgment committed to those who sat there. Besides, he sees souls of slaughtered saints; and, moreover, there were such as had rejected all connection with the beast; and these two classes, who for the time seemed to have lost all, are reunited to their bodies, and reign with Christ no less than the rest. Dr. B. speaks of the verb ἐκάθισαν (“sat”) as a virtual impersonal. This is not doubted; but it in no way connects the clause with what follows, which is his desire. If it had been put in the sentence after the other clauses, there might be ground for such a supposition. As it is, there is none. The first clause leaves room for all the heavenly saints, save the added Apocalyptic sufferers and faithful, which the next clauses distinguish and subjoin. Christ and these heavenly saints quitted heaven together, in Rev. 19; Christ and they reign together over the earth, in Rev. 20; and all those who suffered from, but who really overcame, the beast, are there too, not as Israel reigned over, but reigning with Christ as those who had gone before them. On the figurative view, what can be more absurd than a revival of martyr-spirit, when it is least needed, when all is unprecedently happy and prosperous for the Church?

The last objection is, that our view can offer no consistent explanation of the “judgment” that “was given unto” the enthroned saints. We must be forgiven for pronouncing such a remark somewhat perverse. It is not expressly connected with the slain martyrs, though no doubt they had it as well as the rest; and this, therefore, dissolves the narrow limits which Dr. B. seeks to borrow from Rev. 6:10. We do not deny that there may be a link; but we affirm that the Lord God's judging and avenging the blood of His slain ones is a very distinct thing from judgment being given to others seated on thrones, nay, to themselves there. Dr. B.'s object is to bind together, in the judgment given, both the slain and their slayers, so that if the saints be personally present their persecutors must be also in the same personal way; and if the latter be spiritually understood, so the former. But, as we have seen, this is not the force of judgment being given to men. In his sense, God had already avenged the blood of saints and prophets in Babylon; and the beast and the false prophet, with their instruments, had met their terrible doom from the Lord, before the enthroned saints had judgment given to them, or began to reign with Christ.

Are we mistaken in affirming that our ingenious opponent has wasted his time, his research, his labor, in vainly assaulting the impregnable fortress of a first resurrection. Is it not as true for all saints who suffer with Christ, as the second death is sure for all sinners who despise Him?

The Premillennial Advent: 7. The Judgment and the Eternal State

There are few subjects as to which the thoughts of men more decidedly clash with the revealed mind of God than the Judgment; there is none, perhaps, in which the children of God are more endangered by the unbelief so natural to the heart at all times, and by the confusion which has prevailed so long. The enemy has sought to avail himself of all sorts of things, good or bad, in order to darken spiritual intelligence and blind the eye alike to “that blessed hope” and to the judgment which hangs day by day over this doomed earth. Thus he has taken advantage of the modern impetus given to Bible circulation and missionary efforts, admirable as they are in their objects, and still more as they might be, if directed according to the word by the wisdom which comes down from heaven, but capable of the sad illusion that men are to bring about the times of refreshing for the world in the absence of its rejected Lord. To such the idea of a sudden, unprecedented, divine interruption, not crowning their successes, but calling to account for unfaithfulness, for self-seeking, for despising the scripture, for grieving and quenching the Holy Ghost, is painful and unwelcome, and so much the more when Christians are drawn into the snare of the common hopes, interests, and efforts of the age. It convicts them of ignorance of scripture, and of opposing, as far as they can, the mind and counsels of God. It detects the pride which endeavors to patch up the broken vessel rather than confess our fault and submit to the sentence of God. It recalls to zealous repentance from the bustling plans and enterprises which tend to cover the weakness, and ruin, and guilt of man. Above all, it demands an immediate stop to every movement which is outside and against God's word, and positive separation, in all its forms, from a world which is recognized as ripening for vengeance. Let none say that this is to damp the activities of the grace which seeks the good of all men, specially of the household of faith. The removal of obstructions, the cessation from known evil, the refusal of the world's harness—in a word, obedience is ever peremptorily due to God, and never can lead to relaxation of Christian love and labors, though it may throw off the slough of the serpent that has mixed itself up with them.

But we must turn to Dr. Brown, who assumes that the judgment is “one undivided scene,” not rule over nations, nor vengeance upon public bodies, but a judgment of individual persons. He urges that the two things are so different that they cannot be put into one unmixed conception. Now, is it not evident that such statements as these betoken a mind unsubject to the word of God, which never speaks of an unbroken scene, nor of an unmixed conception? The question is not whether there is a judgment of individuals, of the secrets of the heart, but whether the Bible reveals but one single judgment act at the end of all, an act which embraces every creature, saint or sinner, indiscriminately, and then for the first time manifests their eternal destiny.

But it is plain at a glance that such a scheme fails, not because there is no truth in it, but because it is the narrowest section of the truth. It interprets the entire judgment of God by that which is a single though a most solemn and momentous part. The true question is, does not scripture make known both temporal and eternal judgment, executed by Christ the Lord? Does it not disclose vengeance on living men, as well as a holy assize over the dead? Does it not require us to believe that there will be what we may distinguish as His war-judgment, previous to His judging as a King, and this again before He calls up the dead for the resurrection of judgment (Rev. 19, 20) This is the plain, simple meaning of the last great prophetic strain which treats of the orderly sequence of these events, against which it is in vain to appeal, as Dr. B. does, to texts here and there, which merely speak of judgment when Christ comes: for all, premillennialist and postmillennialist, equally bow to this.

But we are pointed to Matt. 25 as an insuperable difficulty in our way. In order to explain what we believe to be its true bearing, it will be necessary to take the prophecy as a whole. First of all, it is clear that the first and greater part of Matt. 24 addresses the disciples, as they were associated in feeling, faith, and hopes with Jerusalem and the special portion of Israel in their land. Hence they are warned against false Messiahs, they are guarded against confounding the earlier sorrows with the great tribulation that is to precede the nation's deliverance; but the gospel is the gospel of the kingdom, the prophetic admonition to flee is for “them which be in Judea,” the token on earth is the idol set up in the sanctuary, and the Jewish Sabbath is supposed to be in force. Furthermore, there is not a thought of going to be with the Lord in the air; not a hint of the Father's house, but a very specific showing them that the Son of man is to appear in the most vivid and sudden way, “as the lightning,” for their deliverance. They are not therefore to go into the desert, nor to believe that He is arrived and in some secret chambers; for when He does appear, it will be with power and great glory, and their enemies shall see and mourn. It is Christ's coming to the earth for the deliverance of the godly Jewish remnant who will be at the close of the age awaiting Him. The disciples were their forerunners in many obvious and important respects. But it is plain that the close of Matt. 24 and the parables of the virgins and of the talents in Matt. 25, drop all particular connection with the Jews and Jerusalem, and evidently are verified in the calling and occupation of Christians as such, during the absence of Christ in heaven. Equally clear is it that Matt. 25:31 to the end concerns distinctively the Gentiles.

It is not a mere infliction of chastisement, it is not an outpouring of vengeance on a particular nation, or an assemblage of hostile people; it is the calm session of judgment before the King of all the earth, and before Him shall be gathered all nations. But it is in positive contrast, as to its subjects, with Rev. 20:11, 12, because there all that stand before the throne are the dead, here all are the living; there, as we have shown, they are exclusively the wicked, here they are both good and bad; there the judged, being the dead, were irrespective of country and race, here they are the Gentiles as distinct from the Jews. The ground of the judgment, which hangs like a millstone round the neck of the traditionalist, confirms the true view. For the king does not on this occasion enter on the details of general conduct. There is no judging of the guilty Jew according to the law, and of the guilty Gentile outside the law, according to his actual condition, as in Rom. 2. But the gathered nations are dealt with according to their treatment of the King's brethren, sent out to announce the kingdom before it was, as it will then be, established in power: for God will take care to send forth previously an adequate and universal testimony; and this will act as a test among the nations. Accordingly the King owns as done to Himself the least kindness shown to His messengers, and punishes their dishonor as leveled at His own person. But manifestly such a test best applies to a brief and eventful crisis, when the gospel of the kingdom shall be proclaimed far and wide, immediately before the appearance of the King, who judges thereon by a criterion utterly inapplicable to the times when the glad tidings were not so preached, much less the kingdom. Again, the true interpretation accounts for the King's brethren as a class distinct from “the sheep,” or godly Gentiles. They are His converted Jewish brethren, who witness the kingdom of all nations before the end comes. This distinction is lost and useless in the common view; for important as such a thing is in a judgment of the quick, all differences of Jew and Gentile disappear in the resurrection, which, it will be observed, is here unnoticed, and we believe incompatible with the language employed. Scripture never speaks of nations after resurrection, as Dr. B.'s exposition supposes. Nor is there real force in Mr Birks' objections. For 1St, the judgment of the living nations has not been given in the preceding parables, but we have had the Jews and the Christians: now we have the Gentiles as such; 2nd, Isa. 66 in no way denies such a gathering of all nations as Matt. 25 describes; 3rd, the sentence being final is no obstacle, for the King is there to decide everlastingly; 4th, as to the notion of a climax, it is to us an evident mistake. The prophecy to be complete naturally shows us the ways of the King with the nations after sketching His ways with His Jewish remnant, and with the Christian parenthesis.

Accordingly we have no doubt that it is quite fallacious to confound this very special dealing of the Lord with all the Gentiles summoned before His millennial throne, and the description of His judgment of the dead found elsewhere. But this overthrown, the chief buttress of Dr. B.'s proposition eighth is undermined. We believe, as well as he, that when Christ comes He will put honor on such as have confessed Him, and shame on those who have denied Him; we believe that both reward and punishment will be “in that day;” but it does not thence follow that all are dealt with simultaneously, as Dr. B. takes for granted. Hence Matt. 7:21-23; 10:32, 34; 13:30, 43; 16:24-27; 25:10; John 5:28, 29; Acts 17:31; Rom. 2:5-16; 1 Cor. 3:12-15: 4:5; 2 Cor. 5:9-11; 2 Thess. 1:6-10; 1 Tim. 5:24, 25; 2 Tim. 4:1; 2 Peter 3:7-12; 1 John 2:28; 4:17; Rev. 3:5; 20:11-15; 21:7, 8; 22:12, 15, are wholly unavailing. Seine of these texts refer only to the quick, and others to the dead alone; none treats good and bad, quick and dead, as judged in one indiscriminate judgment. Indeed John 5 shows that, in the most momentous sense, the believer shall not come into judgment; and that a life-resurrection awaits him, as a judgment-resurrection remains for the evil doer.

it is useless, therefore, for Dr. B. to prove, as he does clearly, that man is appointed to death and judgment: we believe it as strongly as himself. No more does it serve his purpose to urge that we must all be manifested before the tribunal of Christ, and receive according to the good or had done in the body; for we too insist on it as a clear and necessary truth. Both look for “the hour,” and that day:” both connect judgment with the coming of Christ: both maintain that “then he shall reward every man according to his works.” But not a text hints, nor an argument proves, that “the righteous and the wicked will be judged together.” Dr. B.'s case entirely breaks down. His claim would have been strong, indeed, if Matt. 25:31, and seq., could be legitimately identified, in time, character, and subjects, with Rev. 20:11, and seq. But there is a plain and certain contrast between them, not sameness. In Matthew, nations are in question, in the Revelation the dead; in the one the scene is the earth, in the other earth and heaven are fled away; in the former both the righteous and the accursed are seen, in the latter none but the lost; in the gospel the living Gentiles are tested by a very special preaching of the kingdom, which is to go forth before the end of the age, and they are sentenced according to their behavior towards the messengers of the king, while in the Apocalypse it is a solemn scrutiny of those things which were written in the books, according to the works of the dead—a ground of judgment not limited to a peculiar testimony and epoch, but embracing all ages and dispensations, before the flood and after it—under the law, or without the law—whether they had, or whether they had not, heard the gospel. The difference, therefore, is complete, and so is the failure of Dr. B.'s scheme of a universal and simultaneous judgment.

It remains to notice his ninth and last proposition: “At Christ's second appearing, 'the heavens and the earths that are now,' being dissolved by fire, shall give place to 'new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness,' without any mixture of sin—good unalloyed by the least evil.” The passages cited are 2 Peter 3:7-13; Rev. 20:11; 21:1. “By putting this passage, then, in Revelation alongside of the passage in Peter, we obtain the following argument, which I believe it to be impossible to answer: The conflagration and passing away of the heavens will be ‘as a thief in the night, in or at the day of the Lord,'—the time of His second advent. (2 Peter 3) But the millennium precedes the 'fleeing or passing away of the earth and heaven.' (Rev. 20, 21) Therefore the millennium precedes the second advent.” (B. p. 289.) But there is an obvious and fatal fallacy here. For we deny that the day of the Lord is equivalent to the time of His second advent. There are most momentous changes linked with the Lord's coming and previous to His day. Thus the dead saints are raised, the living are changed, and both caught up to be with the Lord in the air at His coming. How long this precedes the day of the Lord, it is not our present object to inquire; but we altogether reject Dr. B.'s assumption that they are the same thing, or even at the same time. Without that identification, which the author takes for granted instead of proving, the syllogism comes to nothing. The truth is, that “the day of the Lord” may be readily seen, by any who examine the Old Testament prophets, to be a long period characterized (when it is fulfilled, not in early types, but in the grand events of the last days) by the direct intervention of Jehovah's presence, power, and glory here below. Peter furnishes the connecting tie between Isa. 65, 66 and the Revelation, and embraces within the compass of that great day, not only the millennium, but the season that succeeds till the heavens and earth that now are give place to “all things made new.” The millennium then does not precede the day of the Lord, but is included within its magnificent range. The coming of the Lord gathers His saints to Him before that day, and a fortiori before the millennium, as we have already sufficiently shown in commenting on 2 Thess. 2:1. Thus the argument, which Dr. B. supposed it impossible to answer, is as loose and incoherent as the sand. And here we close our reply to his assault upon premillennialism.

The Premillennial Controversy

PLAIN men are apt to think that if the premillennial advent of our Lord be the true doctrine, it ought to be made as plain as possible to the whole body of the Church. That is reasonable. But the objection that the majority of the Church at present are against the doctrine is no good reason against it. The majority, perhaps, may not give heed to the light of prophecy; they may not humbly invoke the Spirit of prophecy to their aid. “Do not interpretations belong to God?” Balaam, a bad man, was a true prophet; and a good man may be a false interpreter of prophecy: a good man may not be good in all respects. In these benevolent but bustling times, a minister who has little leisure may be so little learned on this important point, that some of the flock may have the advantage of him. Even with great leisure and application, we find that on this, as on other subjects, a single fundamental error in the premises will vitiate the whole argument. One of the signs of our times ought to arrest the attention of the whole Church, namely, that of the prophecy of scoffers in the last days, saying, Where is the promise of His coming? This implies a prominent preaching of the advent on the very eve of its and such a preaching is now in progress. It is worse indeed to be a scoffer, but it is not good to be unwise.

There was a time, and that the earliest, when the majority of the Church was not against this doctrine. It was believed and taught by the most eminent fathers of the age, next after the apostles, “that before the end of the world Christ should reign upon earth for a thousand years, and that the saints should reign under Him in all holiness and happiness.” This doctrine was by none of their contemporaries opposed or condemned, and therefore it was the catholic doctrine of the Church of that ago; it was taught as such, and not as a matter of private opinion. None denied that it was the tradition of the Church, clearly derived and authentically delivered. “Up to the middle of the third century this doctrine load prevailed and met with no opposition; but thenceforth it began to decline—principally, says Mosheim, through the authority of Origen, who opposed it because it was incompatible with some of his favorite sentiments. “It was overborne,” says Chillingworth, “by imputing to the Millenaries that which they held not; by abrogating the authority of John's Revelation, as some did; or by derogating from it as others, ascribing it not to John the apostle, but to some other John, they knew not whom; by calling it a Judaical opinion, and yet allowing it to be probable by corrupting the authors for it.”

It is objected that the creeds drawn up in the early ages of Christianity, the Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian creeds, show that the Church of those days confessed that Christ would judge all men, both the quick and the dead, at the time of His coming. They did so, grounding that article of their faith on such scriptures as Acts 10:42 Peter 4:5; 2 Tim. 4:1. But as Augustine said truly, speaking of the particulars of eternal judgment, “All these things, it is to be believed, shall come to pass, but in what manner and in what order they may come to pass, experience of the things themselves shall then teach us, rather than the understanding of man can perfectly attain to it at present.” The general doctrine of universal judgment was all that was intended to be confessed in the creeds, not the particulars.

I must add one fact connected with this subject, showing the opinion of our Reformers in England. The prophecy, Jer. 23:5-8, compared with its parallel Jer. 33:16, all foretells our Lord's reign on earth at the time when the Jews shall be restored to their own land; which reign on earth is elsewhere expressed by His sitting on the throne of David (2 Sam. 7:12, 13; Psa. 89:3, 4; Isa. 9:6; Luke 1:32, 33; Acts 2:30). But when He shall sit on that throne, He will give rewards of grace to His servants. “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me on my throne, even as I also overcame and am set down with my Father in his throne” (Rev. 3:21). Now the Church of England annually anticipates the second advent of our Lord in its advent services, introducing them always by reading that prophecy, Jer. 23 for the epistle, on Sunday next before advent. The collect for that day was taken out of St. Gregory's Sacramentary, but the epistle and gospel were both newly selected by our Reformers in the reign of Edward the sixth. Surely, then, the objection that the majority of the Church of Christ in the present day are opposed to the doctrine of His premillennial advent is not so formidable, as the fact itself is to be regretted.

H. G.

Present State of Controversies on Apocalyptic Interpretation

To the Editor of “The Bible Treasury.”

Dear brother, The above, as you are doubtless aware, is the title of a Fourth Appendix to the recently published volume of “Warburtonian Lectures” by the Rev. E. B. Elliott. A considerable part of this Appendix is occupied with a review of the Futurist controversy, in reference to which Mr. E. notices, among other works, a volume of mine, the title of which he misquotes, and the authorship of which he attributes to another. May I ask a page in “The Treasury” for the purpose of correcting these mistakes? In doing so, I would further, if I may, make a remark or two on Mr. E.'s quotations from the book referred to, as well as on the general question of Apocalyptic interpretation.

The title of the volume quoted by Mr. Elliott is “Plain Papers on Prophetic and other Subjects.” Mr. E. calls it “Plain Tracts on Prophetic Subjects,” and attributes it (with the qualifying clause, however, “as I believe”) to “Mr. Macintosh.” The fact is, the volume was published anonymously, without the least desire on my part for its authorship to be known; but as the French translation of it in two volumes, by M. Recordon, was, without my knowledge, published with my name, their remains no motive for longer withholding it in this country. And as I perceive the “London Monthly Review” has attributed the work to my valued friend, the author of “Outlines of Typical Teaching,” a series of papers now appearing in that Review, it seems desirable, once for all, to acknowledge that the sole responsibility for the work devolves on your unworthy correspondent, whose name will be found at the close of this letter. I have no complaint to make of any one; I am only ashamed to have occupied so much space with so insignificant a subject.

The subject of Apocalyptic interpretation, however, is far from being insignificant; and whatever may be the amount of present differences of judgment among prayerful, diligent, students of prophecy, we may well rejoice in the amount of attention which is being directed to it, and we may surely trust the great Head of the Church to bless the calm, dispassionate discussion of points on which differences exist, to the gradual clearing up of the subject, so that seeing light in His light, we may see “eye to eye” with one another also. It ought to be easy to us all to consider what may be advanced against those views which may have commended themselves to our own minds; and should such counter-arguments have real weight, it should be equally easy to acknowledge our mistakes, and bow to the truth by which our views are corrected and enlarged.

Mr. E. re-asserts, in the Appendix above-named, the objection urged by him in former works to that which is known as “Futurism” in the exposition of the Book of Revelation, and states his conviction that they have not been answered in any works on the subject which have since appeared. Would it not have been well for him, as he does quote “Plain Papers on Prophetic Subjects,” and has evidently read the volume, to notice the reply afforded by the following paragraph to one of his chief reasons for the historical mode of interpretation? His committing to notice what follows is the most remarkable, as he does, for another purpose, quote the very context of the paragraph itself:-

“The weightiest argument urged by those who maintain the exclusively historic application of chaps. 4—19, is, that to interpret them of the future, leaves an interval between the days in which they were written, and the commencement of their application, longer than we can suppose would have been left without any information as to the events by which it should be marked. The whole force of this argument rests on the assumption that it is in chaps. 4-19, alone, that such information is to be sought for or expected. We have the information in chaps. 2 and 3. The argument is, therefore, without value and without force. Nay more, it suggests an argument of real weight in favor of the futurism of chaps. 4-19. Seeing that we have, in chaps. 2 and 3, that which applies to the whole period from the apostles' days to the excision of the professing body, why should we have it repeated in the succeeding chapters? Further, chap. 9 begins the declaration of 'things which must be after these;' and as 'the things which are,' exhibited in chaps. 2 and 3 are still in existence, it is clearly not in the present or past—not in a period contemporaneous with 'the things which are'—that we must look for 'the things which must be after these.'“ (Plain Papers, &c., pp. 350, 351).

Now, who that has read the fourth edition of Mr. E.'s Horse, and especially his “Review of the Futurists' Apocalyptic Counter Scheme,” in the latter part of vol. 4, does not remember that his first argument is “The supposed instant plunge of the Apocalyptic prophecy into the distant future of the consummation.” With such a “plunge” the futurism of “Plain Papers,” &c., is not chargeable; and here I must beg the reader to remember that the paragraph just quoted from the volume is merely a statement of the position maintained, not of the reasonings by which it is supported. For these reasonings I must refer to the work itself; especially the paper on “Apocalyptic Interpretation,” commencing from page 341.

It is from that paper Mr. E. quotes, in representing me as strongly asserting “the principle that a prayerful scripture student, 'entirely unacquainted with the details of profane history,' or 'the vicissitudes of political and ecclesiastical affairs, during the last eighteen centuries,' may 'equally with the most learned,' study and understand prophetic scriptures, in so far as they concern 'Christ's glory, in His relation to the Church, to Israel, or to the world.'“ To his charge of inconsistency with myself on this point, I hope shortly to advert. Had the whole passage been transferred to Mr. E.'s pages, instead of a clause here, and another there, his readers would have seen that I am far from denying that human learning is of any use in prophetic studies, or from affirming that history may never with propriety be referred to in their prosecution. What I maintain is, that the Christian is not necessarily dependent on such resources. These are my words— “If the glory of Christ be the object, the things of Christ the subject, and the Holy Ghost Himself the communicator of prophetic instruction, the Christian cannot be dependent for the possession of it on human learning. A man might possess vast stores of erudition, and be able with ease to quote every page of this world's dark history, and not be in the least better prepared for the study of God's prophetic word. The humble Christian, unable to read the scriptures in any language but his own, and entirely unacquainted with the details of profane history, may, nevertheless, prayerfully study the prophetic scriptures. Equally with the most learned, he may count on his Father's faithful love to enable him, by the teaching of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, to understand and receive what these scriptures unfold of the diverse glories of Christ, the Son, whether in His relation to the Church, which is His body, or to Israel, the world, and creation, over the whole of which His rule is yet to extend. It is in the establishment of this blessed universal sway, and in the dealings of God, whether in judgment or in grace, by which it is immediately preceded, that we have the great subjects of prophecy, and especially of the Apocalypse—not in those vicissitudes of political and ecclesiastical affairs throughout the last eighteen centuries, with which the pages of historians are filled.” (Plain Papers, &c., pp. 343, 344).

Mr. E. seeks to prove me inconsistent with myself on this point by adducing instances in which I have referred to well-known historical facts and epochs, in illustration of certain subjects, or in support of certain arguments. Had I maintained that human learning and historical information were absolutely useless or invariably mischievous, his proof of inconsistency would have been complete, and I must have pleaded guilty to the charge. But when all that I have affirmed is, that these qualifications are not. indispensable—that “the great subjects of prophecy” are such that the uneducated, but humble and prayerful, student of scripture may become acquainted with them, I see nothing in such a position to interdict my own use of any acquaintance with history I may possess, or to forbid my appealing to well-known historical facts, especially in controverting views which mainly depend on historical evidence. Such a use of history bears no real resemblance to that made of it by Mr. E. in his “Horae,” and in his Lectures. The results of historical and antiquarian research, and that on the most gigantic scale, form the staple of his Apocalyptic exposition. These results must either be taken on trust—and this Mr. E. would scarcely desire—or they must be tested by those competent to judge of their accuracy. The qualifications for this are possessed by few indeed: and can we suppose that it is to such a few that acquaintance with God's revelation of the future is designedly restricted? Mr. E. may seek to identify his principle of historic interpretation with the very occasional and subordinate allusions to history made by writers of futurist views; but there is no more real identity between them than exists between Paul's quotation from a heathen poet, in his address to an Athenian audience, and the sermons of certain preachers of past generations, who made quotations from the Greek and Latin classics the staple of their pulpit ministrations.

Had Mr. Elliot deemed the volume worthy of a fuller notice, or even this single paper on “Apocalyptic Interpretation,” his readers would have found that there is a kind of “futurism” held by some, entirely distinct from the Tractarian futurism of Dr. Maitland, and differing in several important aspects from that of Mr. Molyneux. They would have found it supported, moreover, by a class of arguments such as Mr. E. has certainly not met, nor attempted to meet, either in his older or more recent writings on the subject. The distinction between the course of providential events, with which history is concerned, and that solemn final crisis, to which prophecy in general seems to point; our Lord's own three-fold division of the book of Revelation, the one part succeeding the other, instead of their being contemporaneous; the possibility of chapters 4-19, being rightly understood, both on a protracted scale, and as having their definite fulfillment in a short future crisis; the difference between the divine names and titles in the Apocalypse and in the other apostolic writings; the judicial character which attaches to heavenly scenes and personages in this book, so strikingly contrasting with the full unmingled grace of the present dispensation; as well as the marked differences between the cries for vengeance which characterize the Apocalyptic sufferers and the prayers for forgiveness of their enemies, by which Christ and Christian martyrs are distinguished—are all arguments for the futurity of Apocalyptic scenes, with which it would be well for the esteemed author of the “Home” and the “Warburtonian Lectures” to grapple, when he again writes a review of the Futurist controversy. On one point, if not trespassing too largely on your space, I should be glad to furnish another extract from the Paper on “Apocalyptic Interpretation.” It is in reference to the systems, such as Mede's, Bishop Newton's, and Mr. Elliott's own, “which tie down the Apocalyptic visions to a supposed fulfillment in historic details.”

“It would be easy, from the contrariety of these systems to one another, to show that they are mutually destructive of each others' claims definitely to explain the particulars of what they all allege to be fulfilled prophecy. But though this forms no part of our object, it may be well, in adverting to this topic, to point out to the reader a distinction of no small importance. Twenty students of the Apocalypse, agreeing in this, that from chap. 4 it is as yet unfulfilled, may have different interpretations of this unfulfilled prophecy to suggest. Such differences do but prove that the prophecy is as yet far from being understood. The partial or total ignorance of the expositors accounts for such differences. But suppose twenty expositors should agree with each other in maintaining that these chapters, or most of them, are absolutely and finally fulfilled, and yet have twenty conflicting theories of interpreting them—what do such differences prove? Not only that the expositors are mistaken in their theories, but also that the basis on which they all proceed is a mistake. What claim can a prophecy have to be a fulfilled one, when twenty can suppose it to have been fulfilled in twenty different events?... Scripture does contain fulfilled prophecies; but no such obscurity hangs over them. There are not twenty ways in which godly people suppose the prophecies of our Lord's birth, earthly parentage, miracles, betrayal, and crucifixion, to have been fulfilled. And had the Apocalyptic seals, trumpets, and vials been actually accomplished, there would not have been among expositors so many conflicting methods of explaining them.” (Plain Papers, &c., pp. 352, 353.)

The writer of “Plain Papers” has never represented Antichrist as “both enthroned within the city (of Jerusalem) and besieging the city from without at one and the same time.” The truth seems to be that Antichrist, in. league with the apostate portion of the Jews who will have returned to their own land, will be in possession of Jerusalem, and himself besieged there by “the king of the North,” (Dan. 11:40, 41) when the Lord appears, to the destruction of the wicked both among besiegers and besieged.

Mr. E. notices, as a peculiarity in “Plain Papers, &c.,” that they “make the two sackcloth-robed witnesses' three and a half years of witnessing to precede, instead of being identical with, Antichrist's three and a half years of supremacy in Jerusalem, the one being the first half, the other the second half, of Daniel's last hebdomad.” “But,” objects Mr. E., “unfortunately Apoc. 11:2 expressly defines the two witnesses' three and a half years as the three and a half years of the Gentiles treading down the holy city.” I have turned, since reading this, to Rev. 11:2, and can find no mention in it of the two witnesses. They are not named before the 3rd verse; and it certainly seems to me open to serious question whether the “thousand two hundred and threescore days” of verse 3 are the same period as the forty and two months of the previous verse. But the question of Daniel's last hebdomad, and its connections with the Apocalypse, is much too wide for a communication like the present.

The Lord give to all His people humbly and prayerfully to search His word, and vouchsafe to us a good understanding in all things.

Believe me, my dear brother, Yours faithfully, WM. TROTTER.

Priesthood: Fragment

Jesus does two things in heaven. Besides presenting me in himself before God, he intercedes for me by virtue of his own unchangeable righteousness. Nor does this weaken our sense of sin, but the contrary. Feeling for sin is mostly deeper when we can see it as all put away. If this could be imputed to the believer, Christ must die over and over again, for without shedding of blood there is no remission. We are not justified from one sin today, and from another tomorrow. Justification might then take place ever so many times, the reverse of which is ruled in Heb. 9 and 10 where it is the question. Righteousness is not by priesthood. Christ is between us and God, and we are in him as our head. His present priesthood is exercised as regards our walk; but justification has to do with our persons, and not our works. As my head, I am perfect in him; as my representative, he stands and pleads for me. And there is the contrast with the sacrifices, under the law, offered for every sin. If the death of Christ has not finished the work once and forever, he must die very often. If he has died once for all, it is because the worshippers once purged have no more conscience of sins

Dawning Light of Prophecy: No. 1

“The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” Rev. 19

The first ray of hope for fallen man gleams forth brightly, yet strangely and mysteriously, from the curse pronounced on man's seducer, Satan. “The Lord God said unto the serpent, ... ... ..I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”

There is no promise made directly to the fallen pair. There is no positive grace or rescue for them, even shadowed forth. A punitive infliction is pronounced on Satan—ominous of even his destruction; and the “seed of the woman,” a certain person thus simply designated, should execute the predicted retribution. The damage to be done to the seducer should exceed that which he had done, and should do, unto man, so far even as a wounded head transcends a wounded heel. Yet this was retribution only, and that on Satan, not deliverance for man, except so far as Satan was concerned. Positive blessedness for the miserable race of men was as yet unrevealed. Still there was a ray of hope presented however mysteriously and indirectly.

2. But positive promise is very shortly afterward vouchsafed; though mystery still enshrouded the revelation. “Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from father's house, unto a land that I will skew thee;

I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt blessing: and I will bless them that bless thee, curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall families of the earth be blessed.” Gen. 12:1-3. In this man, Abram, the son of Terah, of Ur of the Chaldees, there shall be in some way, at some period, the bestowment of “blessedness,” that is happiness, well-being, upon all the families of man. The nature of the predict and promised happiness is not revealed. Nothing is made known as to its degree or its duration. The mode of its accomplishment is not explained. It shall be “in Abram.” How in him! Nothing further is unfolded. Yet there is positive foundation here for both faith and hope. God hath spoken, and be will assuredly perform. Man shall one day be happy again. This shall be accomplished in some way, through this certain Hebrew, Abram (not as yet Abraham), the son of Terah.

But not through him directly. The direct accomplisher of this wondrous blessedness should be a certain one of Abraham's seed. This further intimation comes out in connection with the mysterious record of a transaction having reference to sacrifice; in which the only son of this Abraham had been, at God's command, virtually slain and offered up. “By myself have sworn, saith the Lord, that because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore, and thy seed shall possess the gate of thine enemies. And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice.” Gen. 22:1; 6-1 8. The blessedness to the nations shall flow through a certain One of his seed; not through his seeds, “as of many,” in the plural, but through his one grain of seed, in the singular. But through which one of all the promised multitude, innumerable as the stars, or the ocean's sands? The promise does not specify this, and faith must wait, and hope must build upon the certainty actually proclaimed. Universal happiness is once more predicted. As it had been before declared that the “woman's seed” should inflict vengeance on Satan; so now it is further foretold that “Abraham's seed” shall bring in positive blessedness. Thus dawns the light of prophecy—mysterious and extremely undefined as yet, but still sure, and full of cheering import.

There were also mystic rites and sacrifices. These had somehow obtained almost universally among the sons of men. They, too, seemed certainly to denote something having reference to release from sin, and from its consequences. But of these types we do not speak, the word of prophecy being our present theme.

“And he took up his parable, and said Balaam the son of Beor hath said—And the man whose eyes are opened hath said:

He hath said, which heard the words of God—And knew the knowledge of the Most High, Which saw the vision of the Almighty—Falling into a trance, but having his eyes open:

I shall see him, but not now—I shall behold him, but not nigh: There shall come a Star out of Jacob—And a Scepter shall rise out of Israel, And shall smite the corners of Moab, And destroy all the children of Sheth, And Edom shall be a possession—Seir also shall be a possession for his enemies;

And Israel shall do valiantly, Out of Jacob shall come he that shall have dominion, And shall destroy him that remaineth of the city.

And when he looked on Amalek, he took up his parable, and said, Amalek was the first of the nations—But his latter end shall be that he perish forever, And be looked on the Kenites, and took up his parable, and said, Strong is thy dwelling place—And thou puttest thy nest in a rock, Nevertheless the Kenite shall be wasted—Until Asshur shall carry thee away captive.

And he took up his parable, and said, Alas! who shall live when God doth this!”

(Num. 24:15-23,)

How brightly, amidst all the mystery of it, does the light shine forth from this very early prophecy! There should come one, whom Balaam himself should see; yet “not now,” but in the future. The prophet should himself behold this majestically announced One; but “not nigh,” not, to man's eye, with near approach. The mysterious One, thus introduced, should be as a “Star,” and He should wield a “scepter.” He should spring forth from Israel. He should “have dominion;” but apparently universal judgments must introduce it. Moab and Sheth, Edom and Seir, Amalek and the Kenite—in the persons of their descendants at some un-named future period (a remote one according to the previous intimations of the prophet) should fall beneath the avenging power of the predicted potentate. And the solemn conclusion wrung from the lips of the affrighted seer, sheds further light upon the whole announcement. “And he took up his parable and said, Alas, who shall live when God doeth this!” There shall come a day, connected with the introduction of the scepter and dominion of the predicted potentate—a day so great and terrible as to place in apparent jeopardy the lives of all the sons of men. Who shall live when God doeth this! The flood had gone over the earth. A promise, with seven-fold perfectness of repetition, had been made, that no more should all flesh perish by a flood of waters. But here is apparently another universal—or all but universal—judgment predicted. “Who shall live when God doeth this?” God's Sovereign must assume His power in such a mode, at so terrible a crisis.

Three grand events already dawn in the prophetic page. The head of Satan shall be bruised, the families of all the earth shall one day be made happy, but there must intervene a day so fearful as to call forth from lips controlled, however unwillingly, by inspiration, the portentous exclamation, “Who shall live when God doeth this?” A certain One of the woman's seed—a certain “He” —should inflict the sentence upon the seducer. A certain One seed, not further indicated as yet from the innumerable host which should descend from Abraham's loins, should accomplish the promised blessedness. A certain “Star” and “Scepter” from Israel's progeny should execute the apparently universal judgment—should seize the apparently universal dominion.

5. Job, though reproved of God, for having “darkened counsel by words without knowledge,” and having to confess with shame and sorrow at the last, “Therefore have I uttered that I understood not; Things too wonderful for me, which I knew not,”

yet furnishes a bright prophetic ray—more than a ray. Venturing to speak with reference to future resurrection, and giving utterance to a notion that there should be no resurrection till the end of all things— “till the heavens be no more” —(chap. 14:10-12), venturing thus to speak, he was remonstrated with thereon by him who only could pronounce the truth with certainty. Job said, “Man dieth, and wasteth away; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?

As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up, So man lieth down and riseth not;

Till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.”

These words fell not unnoticed from the lips of the venerable, yet troubled and confused, sufferer. With other unadvised assertions, they were plainly taken up when, in the end, God himself addressed himself to Job. “Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?

Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?

Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? Or hast thou walked in the search of the depth? Have the gates of death been opened unto thee? Or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death?”

Chap. 38:1, 2, 4, 16 and 17.

How then should he adventure the assertion, that “As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up, So man lieth down and riseth not till the heavens be no more"?

The order of the resurrection was not as yet revealed. Only Job must not assert what would directly contradict full revelations which should be made afterward. Yet even Job could say:

“Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book!

That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever!

For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth;

And though alter my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:

Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another;

Though my reins be consumed within me.” Chap. 19:23-27.

His wondrous words were “written” —yea, “printed in a book,” whatever was the meaning of Job's very words, so rendered. And truly in this case, the words of Job were words of knowledge—divinely imparted knowledge. In the subsequent light we discern this light. A “Redeemer” should one day stand upon the earth. Job knew this; and that, though his body should become the food of worms, yet in his flesh he should see God. He knew that he should die, and rise again. Yea, with the wise woman of Tekoah, he could say with certainty, “We must needs die"; or, with the yet wiser writer of the book of Ecclesiastes, “The living know this they shall die.” The men of that age could generally affirm this with certainty. The subsequent unfolding to Christians, when the risen Christ had departed shortly to return—the subsequent unfolding to Christians of the mystery that they all “shall not sleep” did not affect the question as to these children of a previous dispensation. They must die. Yet those who had wisdom knew that they should rise again. Job at the least was well assured of this. And his memorable words, written in the Book of Books forever, thus furnish the first definite declaration of a life beyond the death man's sin had introduced.

6. The light breaks in upon us as the waters of a flood, when we approach the times and the prophetic ministry of David.

“David the son of Jesse said, and the man who was raised up on high, The anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet psalmist of Israel, said, The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word wail in my tongue.

The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me.”

Such is the emphatic assertion of his inspiration. Such is the glowing language in which he tells how he was “moved of the Holy Ghost.”

When his heart “indicted a good matter,” and “his tongue was as the pen of a ready writer,” he poured forth predictions of a glorious future to be brought in by the authority and might of One who should, at some future period, arise to rule the earth (Psa. 45). When the utmost wishes of his heart were exhausted, when in “the prayers of David the son of Jesse were ended,” he had just rendered worship on the same account.

“His name shall endure for over; his name shall be continued as long as the sun:

And men shall be blessed in him: all nations shall call him blessed.

Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things.

And blessed be his glorious name forever;

And let the whole earth be filled with his glory; Amen and Amen.

The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.”

Pa. 72:17-20.

And when the hour had come for him to die, his last words were employed in the most beautiful utterance of prophecy as to the same glorious person and his day of equity and mercy—a day however, in each case, announced as being introduced by solemn and exterminating judgments upon the wicked. There is much of mystery still, yet the light breaks in apace. We add only, for the present, those “last words of David:” — “Now these be the last words of David.

David the son of Jesse said—And the man who was raised up on high, The anointed of the God of Jacob—And the sweet psalmist of Israel, said, The Spirit of the Lord spake by me—And his word was in my tongue.

The God of Israel said,- The Rock of Israel spake to me, He that ruleth over men must be just,- Ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, Even a morning without clouds;

As the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain.

Although my house be not so with God;

Yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant—Ordered in all things, and sure:

For this is all my salvation, and all my desire—Although he make it not to grow.

But the sons of Belial shall be all of them as thorns thrust away, Because they cannot be taken with hands.”

2 Sam. 23:1-6.

The light thrown upon the future by the successive revelations of the book of Psalms may well furnish the matter for a subsequent meditation. A thousand such would fail to set it adequately forth to view.

T. S.

Dawning Light of Prophecy: No. 2

The Book of Psalms opens with a description of the truly happy man of the Jewish dispensation—a righteous person; a Jew, obedient, and so blessed or happy in the blessing of Jehovah upon his earthly affairs. Negatively described, he “Walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, Nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.”

Positively, “His delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night.”

Such an one, it is said, “Shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, That bringeth forth his fruit in his season;

His leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”

There is a deep lesson for this day in all this. The source of all true prosperity, of all spiritual prosperity, is here unfolded;

“His delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night.”

This is the true place of never-failing fruitfulness and prosperity. This is the sure fountain of blessedness indeed. May it be ours to discern this fountain and ever to abide closely thereby.

Prophetic testimony immediately follows this introductory Psalm:

“I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.

Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, And the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.

Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron, Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.”

Such is the announcement which introduces us to the great prophetic field of the book of Psalms.

In the previous part of this psalm, the potentates of the earth become confederates in revolt against Jehovah.

“The Kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together Against the Lord, and against his anointed (or, his Christ), saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.” But, “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall have them in derision.”

And Then, shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.”

But when shall this take place? The prophetic announcement already quoted informs us.

Jehovah hath “set his king upon his holy hill of Zion:” in purpose this is already done. “Yet have I set my king;” notwithstanding all the heathen rage, and vain imaginings of these confederates:

“Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.”

I have surely exalted him to Israel's throne. A certain “anointed one” must reign in Zion. But who is he? Hear ye Jehovah's king “I will declare the decree, the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.”

Wonderful progress of the dawning light! This Christ— this “anointed one” —of Jehovah is also JEHOVAH'S SON. And here is the foundation of his sovereignty. He is the heir of Jehovah. Who then shall dispute his claim to the dominion of the earth! The potentates of earth issue their proclamations and manifestoes. This is the sovereign proclamations of Jehovah's Son and King:-

“I will declare the decree, the Lord hath said unto me,

Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.

Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance,

And the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.”

But how will the actual possession of this promised sway over the wide realms of earth be obtained I The kings and rulers set themselves in opposition to this transfer of their power. How shall it be effected? Hearken to the answer afforded in this Scripture, ye who speak and think only of peaceful, quiet progress of the truth:

“Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron;

Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.”

It is judgment—a crisis of sudden, destructive judgment, which must introduce the reign of Jehovah's Son and King. Surely there will be conversion too; and that by the gospel. This we shall see, even in the book before us. But this dread crisis also must surely come and pass by, before the “uttermost parts of the earth” become the possession of Messiah.

How does the light of prophecy, even as the pathway of the just, “shine more and more.” The “seed” of the woman shall inflict stern retribution on the serpent. The “seed” of Abraham shall restore happiness to fallen man. There shall come out of Jacob a “star” and a “scepter,” who shall have dominion—one who shall execute such judgment as to cause the exclamation, “Who shall live when God doeth this!” A prophet, like unto Moses, shall arise and all hearken unto him A Redeemer shall stand upon the earth in the latter day; and in resurrection shall Job behold him. Who is the wondrous One, in whom all these prophecies shall be concentrated? Surely, the psalm we have now glanced at seems to afford an answer—In Jehovah's anointed one, even in Jehovah's Son. Yet how much of mystery still remained.

The Book of Psalms is pervaded by prophetic utterances such as the foregoing. The Second Psalm may serve as the key to much that follows in the book.

In this wondrous book, indeed, there are poured forth the deep exercises of the heart both of David, and of the saints of his dispensation. Their loud hallelujahs also ascend unto their own Jehovah. Whilst, in strict accordance with the principle of righteousness—enforced righteousness; “eye for eye, and tooth for tooth,” which characterized their economy and age—they are heard calling ever and anon for holy vengeance on those who were their foes.

There are also passages in many of these psalms, shadowing forth mysteriously some deep and dreadful tragedy—strangely connected with the person of the predicted future Sovereign. But who, with only the light which those psalms afford, could apprehend their import as to all this? Scarcely could those holy men of old, by whom the Spirit spake these mysterious intimations, do otherwise than “search diligently, what or what manner of time, the Spirit which was in them did signify.” But “not unto themselves” did they “minister those things.” In the present age fuller apprehension is vouchsafed. Yet how much that was mysterious remained to them.

There were some grand features, however, which even then were revealed with much definiteness. Let us go on, then, to trace the dawning light of prophecy.

In the well-known eight Psalm, there is one spoken of—a son of man, who is by Jehovah “crowned with glory and honor,” and “made to have dominion over the works of his hands.” This is one, who is “ordained to still the enemy and the avenger;” and who causes Jehovah's name to be “excellent in all the earth.” “All things” are “put under his feet.” This headship must be a future one. The first man cannot be the one intended here. We see not yet all things so put under any one.

The succeeding Psalm (the ninth) speaks similarly. How much of the Book of Psalms is occupied with language such as this. Who that has applied them to the past has not felt the unpleasant impression of exaggeration and hyperbole, on reading such magnificent announcements? But no! they are the true sayings of God. The future shall accomplish them in fullness.

There is a further feature revealed in this majestic Psalm, even one of grace:

“They that know thy name will put their trust in thee.”

There is not much said, but a bright ray beams forth. Jehovah's name shall, in that future day, be so made known, as that it shall be the object of confidence, and the place of refuge to the needy. Blessed prospect! as yet distant, and but dimly seen; but sure and never, failing, for the mouth of Israel's God hath spoken it.

Psa. 10, also yields its tribute of testimony:

“The Lord is king forever and ever—the heathen are perished out of his land.”

There shall come this glorious day, then, when “the man of the earth shall no more oppress.” How blessed shall the day be, of the future King! What shall be said of the mysterious course of exercise of Psa. 22? There is One who has been “cast upon the Lord from his youth,” and “made to hope in him, even from his mother's belly.” He has been righteous throughout his course. Yet this One is heard exclaiming, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Sorrows and woes encompass him: they have “pierced his hands and his feet:” he is “brought into the dust of death.” They “part his garments among them, and casts lots upon his vesture.” Yet he is “heard” at length, and “helped,” “saved,” and “delivered,” and, triumphantly, he then becomes the leader of Jehovah's congregation, “I will declare thy name,” &e. The result is universal blessing. How much of mystery was there left resting on all this, and yet how much for faith to rest upon, and for hope to cling to! But “not unto themselves did they minister those things, but unto us.” How blessed are our ears!

But the mystery is deepened by the revelation itself, of Psa. 45. The writer's heart is fired, and his tongue as the pen of a ready writer. He pours forth a strain of chastened, adoring eulogy. He “speaks of the things which he has made touching THE KING.” (2-7.) What wondrous speech is this! The future king, of whom so many wondrous things have been predicted already, is here addressed as being GOD. And that in no such style as elsewhere it was said to some:

“I have said, ye are Gods; and all of you are children of the Most High; but, ye shall die like men.”

The strain here is unqualified, and absolute: “Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever.” This is spoken to the King. Yet it is immediately added, “God, thy God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness.” Who can explain this mystery? Faith must wait. “Not unto themselves did they minister those things.” But ponder well the glory with which the Psalm is filled. Yet further, there is a bride presented to this potentate, in this Psalm: “Hearken, O daughter,” &c. This must be the daughter of Zion. She is not composed of both Jew and Gentile, as the church is. She has one people and one parentage naturally. The Gentile is “there with a gift” (verse 12), but is not part of the bride. It is an earthly, though so glorious a scene. The Psalmist thus concludes:

“I will make thy name to be remembered in all generations: Therefore shall the people praise thee forever and ever.”

The Psalm which follows is exceedingly majestic. The same splendor of prophetic intimation of a glorious future, prevails here also. But there is an additional feature in this Psalm. “The city of God,” the “place of the tabernacles of the Most High” filled with his glory, is his special abode. This is manifestly David's own city, Jerusalem. Yet this scene of blessedness is to be realized only, when, at some future period, Jehovah shall have “made wars to cease to the end of the earth,” and thus be “exalted among the heathen,” or Gentiles; as well as in his own chosen city. There is no intimation of any heavenly Jerusalem here. That must be the subject of some future revelation. Let us learn carefully what that is, which the Spirit really unfolds, in each successive passage.

Psa. 72 points forward to a day, when God's “ways shall be known on earth, and his saving health among all nations.” It is added:

“Then shall the earth yield her increase—and God, even our own God, shall bless us.

God, shall bless us—and all the ends of the earth shall fear him.

Israel's own God shall bless them; but all the ends of the earth, also, shall know his saving health.

Psa. 72, enters, as is well known, at great length into the same wondrous theme. There shall arise a king, whose dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth; they that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him, and his enemies shall lick the dust. Yea, all kings shall fall down before him, all nations shall serve him. He shall be feared as long as the sun and the moon endure; throughout all generations. His gentle sway shall be like rain upon the mown grass, and as showers that water the earth. In that day, the poor, the needy, the distressed, and him that had no helper previously, shall be cared for, rescued, relieved, and blessed. Yea, all men shall be blessed in Him, all nations shall call him blessed. The whole earth shall be filled with His glory. The Jehovah Elohim, the Elohim of Israel, shall effect this wondrous revolution. David's heart was full; his utmost wishes satisfied. Yea, it was beyond all that he could have asked or thought. His repeated “Amen” closes the strain; and we are merely informed, in the concluding verse that, “The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.” David's full heart was relieved: his ready utterance recorded; his uttermost desire expressed. David, himself, had nothing beyond this to say.

Psa. 96 concludes its lofty course of worship and prediction in the following strain: “Let the heavens rejoice,” &c. Psa. 98 concludes almost precisely in the same words. Jehovah will come to rule the earth: “he cometh,” “he cometh.” There is intimation of a new mode of manifestation of his presence. He shall be present as he was not previously. Thus much is plainly predicted. Still faith must wait, and expectation beheld in suspense.

Psa. 102, sheds some further light, “Thou shalt arise,” &c. Such is the theme of the Psalm. But it is added, When the Lord shall build up Zion, —he shall appear in his glory.” It is surely Zion the earthly—Israel's actual, literal, metropolis, that is here spoken of. No heavenly Zion was revealed to the saints of the day. The heavenly church was an unrevealed mystery then, Eph. 3:1-10. Let this be pondered well. The heavenly Zion shall have been built up to completion before the Lord appears in glory. But here is a Zion which shall be raised up from its state of ruined stones and dust, when the Lord shall appear in his glory. This shall be the time, too, when the heathen nations, also, shall learn to fear Jehovah's name. There shall be an “appearing in glory” when Jerusalem shall be rebuilt unto the Lord, and the Gentiles converted to Mm. Further revelation, however, must declare what this “appearing in glory” may signify.

One other Psalm (110) only will we cite, “The Lord said unto my Lord,” &c. The future king must first be exalted to Jehovah's own right hand. Will it be from thence that he will come when he appears in glory? Without any further revelation, the thought is already rendered probable. But what increasing wonders crowd upon us! What, or what manner of time, may this mysterious spirit of prediction signify? How earnestly, to be desired is further light! What unimagined events await the future day! A further intimation also is, for the first time, vouchsafed in this Psalm. The future king shall be a Priest; “Thou art a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.” A further theme of wonder now presents itself. Light dawns upon yet another topic for earnest contemplation. Blessed ray of peaceful hope! Here is priesthood too, eternal priesthood. A priest is one who is ordained to offer sacrifices for the guilty. The institutions of Israel's economy had put this beyond question already. And what a priest! The great future potentate shall exercise the mediatorial office. Blessed door of hope! But for whom shall he act? What victim shall he immolate? With what success? What, or what manner of time, does this spirit of prediction signify? How earnestly is further light to be desired. How does the burthened, affrighted conscience of a law-condemned one yearn after certainty! “Those bulls and goats—can they take hence my heavy load?” They shadowed forth something remedial. What can that something be? Still mystery enshrouds; still faith must wait. “Not unto themselves,” did those prophets “minister those things.”

But there had been revealed abundant matter for triumphant worship. “Hallelujah! hallelujah!” Such is the grand burthen of the closing portion of the book of Psalms. The spirit of thanksgiving prevails, more and more, as the volume draws to its close. The concluding Psalms are but one vast, majestic Hallelujah chorus. Yet the character of righteousness is still maintained; and the future day of equity set forth. Psa. 149. Only hallelujahs follow.

Such is the prophetic testimony of the Book of Psalms. The fuller and yet more specific revelations given by Isaiah, may properly engage our attention in our next.

Dawning Light of Prophecy: No. 3

The condition of Judah and Israel in Isaiah's day, was low and sorrowful indeed. The “whole head was sick and the whole heart was faint.” The people were “laden with iniquity;” they had “forsaken the Lord, and provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger.” And Isaiah's first prophetic mission seems to have been one denouncing lengthened period of heaviest woe against the nation.

“Also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me. And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; —and see ye indeed, but perceive not.

Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes;

Lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears, And understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed. Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, —and the houses without man, And the land be utterly desolate, And the Lord have removed men far away, And there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land.”

(Isa. 6:8-12.)

Here, then, we have a definite revelation of the judicial blindness, and the prolonged dispersion of the nation. But we have also a ray of hope, even here. “As a teil-tree and an oak, whose substance is in them when they cast their leaves, so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof.” The destruction shall not be an utter one. The stock of the nation shall be preserved to germinate again when all the judgments shall be overpast. Such is one of the earliest of Isaiah's revelations.

2. In Isa. 2 (which it would appear was of a date subsequent to the vision of chapter 6) we have the day of future blessedness, with the great and terrible day which shall introduce it, depicted in most express and definite language. We present a few verses of this well-known chapter.

“And it shall come to pass in the last days, That the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains And shall be exalted above the hills: and all nations shall flow unto it.

And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob;

And he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: For out of Zion shall go forth the law,-and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

And he shall judge among the nations, —and shall rebuke many people:

And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, —and their spears into pruning hooks;

Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, —neither shall they learn war any more.” (Isa. 2:2-4.)

The procession of the “word of the Lord from Jerusalem” shall, “in the last days,” constitute Mount Zion the most honored and exalted of all the sites of cities. The religion of the God of Israel shall thence spread throughout all nations. Yet “judgment” and “rebuke” must be inflicted. Then shall the nations learn the art of war no more. The character of the predicted judgment is more definitely revealed thus Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, For fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty.

The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down;

And the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.

For the day of the Lord of Hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, And upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low.”

And the idols he shall utterly abolish.

And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, For fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty, When he ariseth to shake terribly the earth.

In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, Which they made each one for himself to worship, —to the moles and to the bats; to go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the clefts of the ragged rocks, For fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty, When he ariseth to shake terribly the earth.

(Isa. 2:10-12; 18-21.)

Such is the introduction of the “good time” of the future. None, we presume, will allege any previous fulfillment of such prophecies as this. “The great and terrible day of the Lord,” then, is already placed in fullest prominence between us and the reign of the Messiah. It is not the quiet progress of the gathering out of the nations of a little flock, which, whilst little, shall be taken up into heaven, as a whole. It is not an ecclesia—a church called out—from amongst the nations. It is a subjugation of the nations themselves. When the nations are subdued, there will be needed no ecclesia, no out-calling of the saints. The ecclesia will have been glorified and transferred to heaven at the commencement of this period. The revelations of the New Testament enable us to say this. But the prediction before us is not one of calling out, but of universal subjugation. The two things are distinct. The one cannot synchronize with the other. Let us discern the things which differ, and seek to give to each scripture we consider its genuine interpretation.

3. We now present the bright light of the revelation of Isa. 9

“For unto us a child is born,-unto us a son is given:

And the government shall be upon his shoulder: —and his name, shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, the everlasting Father the Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, Upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom;-to order it and to establish it With judgment and with justice, from henceforth even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.” (Isa. 9:6, 7.)

The light dawns apace. We fear to weaken, by any comments on this passage, the impression of the whole.

We remark, however, the perpetuity of the “throne of David.” There shall be One who shall occupy it “thenceforth and ever.” It is not a headship of the church; in which church there is “neither Jew nor Gentile.” Such a place was never occupied by David. David was the sovereign of the Jewish nation. To rule over that nation is to sit on David's throne. To contend respecting any literal material throne, is but to trifle, and to degrade this theme. Even the place of the sovereign's presence is no essential of the question. Other revelations may determine that; but the thought here expressed is, that the very sovereignty which David exercised—the sovereignty over that very nation which had David for its king, shall come, in perpetuity, into Messiah's hands. Where his royal residence shall be is not in this prediction brought into question. The grand thought is, that the Wondrous One, whose names of majesty and glory are here given, shall exercise the very sovereignty that David held so long ago. Not until the nation be reconstituted by the restoration of its scattered members, can this take place, Not until the nation, as a nation, has submitted to the true Messiah's sway, will “David's throne” be occupied as this prophecy reveals. The birth of the Sovereign is not necessarily his accession to the throne. The actual assumption of the reins of power—the actual exercise of such power—is not necessarily coeval with that which constitutes heirship and title to such power. Whatever Christ may be, or may not be, now unto the church; he surely does not now “sit on the throne of David” —he does not now exercise sovereignty over the nation of Jews. The nation is not yet subjected unto him.

4. The eleventh chapter of this prophecy is known to all. The earth is to be “filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” The wolf is to dwell with the lamb, and the leopard to lie down with the kid. There is to be neither hurting nor destruction in all Jehovah's holy mountain. But there are two portions of this chapter which are greatly overlooked by many. These we must present, yet as briefly as possible. The first is as follows:-

“But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, And reprove with equity for the meek of the earth:

And he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, And with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.” —(Isa. 11:4.)

Here, once more, is the execution of an introductory judgment. He, with whom “a word is a work,” shall pronounce a sentence of smiting upon the earth, and the earth shall be smitten. Yea; thus shall he slay a certain one—a certain person—here emphatically termed “the wicked one” (the adjective “wicked” being here in the singular number). A further element of light is here thrown upon the future. The destruction of some one grand, special opponent shall signalize the setting up of the Messiah's reign. Who this “wicked one” shall prove to be is not in this prophecy further disclosed.

The second portion is as follows: -

“And it shall come to pass in that day, That the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, Which shall be left, from Assyria and from Egypt, And from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, And from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, —and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, And gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.” (Isa. 11:11, 12.)

Here, then, is a future deliverance of the whole nation, which shall be as complete and wondrous as the exodus from Egypt. The return of a few tributaries to Cyrus from Babylon—a few from one only of the two grand divisions of the nation—cannot have been the fulfillment of this majestic prediction. Let the remainder of the chapter be read. The return here announced is to take place in the day of the destruction of the future “wicked one.” It is to take place in the day when all the ferocity of the earth shall be brought to a close. A yet future restoration is here announced.

And how affecting is the song of triumph which shall then be sung. “And in that day thou shalt say, O Lord, I will praise thee: though thou wast angry,” &c. Let this song be perused, in view of this, its legitimate connection. Read chapter 12 as connected with what immediately precedes it.

5. We have, in the next place, “The burden of Babylon,” followed by a vast series of such “burdens,” and consummated by a most solemn representation of an universal judgment.

But here a difficulty at once presents itself. The doom of Babylon is announced in terms which embrace the whole earth, and which, though the formal empire of Babylon, as well as its metropolitan city, have long since passed away, can scarcely be regarded, on any sound principle of interpretation, as having been fulfilled.

“Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, Cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, —to lay the land desolate And he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.

For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light:

The sun shall be darkened in his going forth, —and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.

And I will punish the world for their evil, —and the wicked for their iniquity;”

Was this fulfilled in the taking of Babylon, by the army of the Medes? Surely it was not. Here then is mystery still. Further light is required. Has such light been subsequently vouchsafed?

We think that a solution has been furnished in the revelations given to Daniel. There Babylon stands as the head of Gentile power—of the power which during the “times of the Gentiles,” should tread down the nation of Israel. This power is shown as a united whole, though in another respect comprising four empires. The whole image of Dan. 2 is represented as perishing at one and the same time. “Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together,” verse 35. Thus, though the reins of imperial power might pass from Chaldean hands, and the metropolis be utterly destroyed, Babylon would still exist. The constituents of her empire—the elements of Gentile sovereignty—elements both morally and essentially one with the dominion once exercised from the city which bore the name—these still exist. Babylon still remains: only at the period when the times of the Gentiles shall have been fulfilled will she cease to be. Let this be borne in mind, and much light will be gained as to the “burdens” of Isaiah. They comprise both the past and the future. Certain announcements therein were fulfilled in past ages, others point to the future. So, in Dan. 12, verse 12, “As concerning the rest of the beasts, they had their dominion taken away; yet their lives were prolonged for a season and a time.” Here the loss of “dominion” is expressly distinguished from the termination of existence.

The announcement of universal judgment is made formally and with most solemn definiteness, in ch. 24 to 27 and again in ch. 34. In ch. 24 we have the following language “Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth.

And it shall come to pass, That he who fleeth from the noise of the fear, shall fall into the pit;

And he that cometh up out of the midst of the pit shall be caught in the snare:

For the windows from on high are open, and the foundations of the earth do shake.

The earth is utterly broken down, The earth is clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly. The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage;

And the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it; and it shall fall, and not rise again.” (Isa. 24:17-20.)

The conquest over Satan and his hosts is next intimated: “It shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall punish the host of the high ones, that are on high.” See Rev. 12:7-12. Then the subjugation of the powers of earth, (as in Rev. 19:19-21) “and the kings of the earth upon the earth.” Read verses 21 and 22. The glory of the earthly city is next presented; whilst in Rev. 21 The heavenly one is seen. Then the millennial “feast of fat things” is declared, as is the reign in Rev. 20:4. The removing of delusion from the nations is also seen in both places: compare Isa. 25:7, and 27:1, with Rev. 20:1-3. The first resurrection also is in each: compare Isa. 25:8, “He will swallow up death in victory,” (when understood as explained in 1 Cor. 15:54) with Rev. 20:4-6. These coincidences are truly wonderful. And it is in connection with all these that we have the one decisive and solemn declaration, “When thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.” Let this declaration serve for the end of strife. Such is the agency which will subdue the earth unto the Lord. When these universal desolations are abroad, then, and alas, not till then, will the inhabitants of the earth learn righteousness.

We will only present, in conclusion of our present paper, two other prophecies of these judgments and their results. The first has reference especially to Israel's earthly city itself.

“Now will I rise saith the Lord;

Now will I be exalted;—now will I lift up myself.

Ye shall conceive chaff, ye shall bring forth stubble:—your breath, as fire, shall devour you.

And the people shall be as the burnings of lime:

As thorns cut up shall they be burned on the fire.

Hear, ye that are far off, what I have done;

And ye, that are near, acknowledge my might.

The Sinners in Zion are afraid;—fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites.

Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire?

Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?”

(Isa. 33:10-14.)

The results of this terrible interference of Jehovah are then described.

“Look upon Zion, the city of our solemnities: Thine eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, A tabernacle that shall not be taken down;

Not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, Neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken.

And the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick:

The people that dwell therein shall be forgiven their iniquity.” (Isa. 33:20, 24.)

The second passage speaks of the whole world. The following call to attention follows the quotation just given.

“Come near, ye nations, to hear; —and hearken, ye people: Let the earth hear, and all that is therein;

The world, and all things that come forth of it.

For the indignation of the Lord is upon all nations, —and his fury upon all their armies:

He hath utterly destroyed them, —he hath delivered them to the slaughter.” (Isa. 34:1, 2.)

Let the subsequent portion of the prophecy be read; and the following beautiful passages will be found to form its close.

“And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness;

The unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: The warfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein.

No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, It shall not be found there; —but the redeemed shall walk there:

And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, And come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads:

They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” (Isa. 35:8-10.)

Such is the dawning light of prophecy, such the bright beams which shine forth beyond all the terrible and darkening clouds of impending judgment. After the well-known historical portion, which, in this prophetic book, follows the revelations now glanced at, we have, in chapters 11-66, a further prophecy of vast comprehensiveness and importance. But the way in which prophetic light is gradually afforded is the point which is sought to be exemplified in these hasty sketches. We purpose, therefore, only to adduce some few instances of predictions in the subsequent prophets, which afford particulars of special interest, in the one or two further papers which will close this series, on the “dawning light of prophecy.” The midday splendor of revelation opens upon us in the New Testament, and from its brightness we are reluctant for any length of time to detain attention.

Dawning Light of Prophecy: No. 4

There are several special portions of the grand course of prophecy comprised in chapters 40 to 61 of Isaiah, which though we cannot quote them, we must at least point attention to in a glance, however brief, at the dawning light of prophecy.

The marvelous tenderness, and the preserving and sovereign grace, by which Israel shall yet be converted and won back to Jehovah—hardened, degraded, cold, and insensate as the Jew has notoriously become, during so many dreary ages of dispersion and unbelief- are features of this vast course of prophetic dealing, which must not be overlooked. How does Jehovah, in these chapters, seek to gain the ear, to soften the heart, to comfort the spirit, to win the confidence of this despised and down-trodden people! Let chapters 40, 44, 45, 48, 49, 54, and 55, be read with this thought in view. The burthen is this-

“For a small moment have I forsaken thee;

But with great mercies will I gather thee.

In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment;

But with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee;

Saith the Lord thy Redeemer.

For this is as the waters of Noah unto me:

For as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth;

So have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee.

For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed;

But my kindness shall not depart from thee;

Neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed,

Saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.”

Well, Gentile reader, this Jehovah of the Jew will have mercy upon the Gentile also. In the full light of subsequent revelations, there is hope, yea, full assurance, both of faith, hope, and understanding, even for the Gentile dog that approaches Jehovah in the way of his own provision.

See how that way is set forth even in this prophecy of Isaiah. There is more than merely dawning light thereon, afforded in the well-known 53rd chapter. There is the full, clear, express declaration of vicarious expiation. It is the first formal revelation of the wondrous fact, that a certain one from amongst the sons of men—a sinless man—should be the victim of atonement between Jehovah and his people. Who this sinless one should be is not revealed; but the fact that such an one should suffer is announced with the utmost definiteness. Would that we might quote the chapter as a whole! But who knows it not? Who that has ever known the sinfulness of sin has not turned hopefully and with comfort to this wondrous prophecy!

Grounded on this announcement of atonement and justification, by the sufferings of one for all, we have in chapter 55, an invitation full of evangelical light and grace. There are living waters, wine and milk, offered without money and without price. The future day of judgment is not the sole topic which is connected with the introduction of the better age. It is, alas! very solemnly prominent; but grace, and penitence, and conversion are all to be vouchsafed. An “everlasting covenant” is to be made with Jehovah's people, “even the sure mercies of David.” The terms of that covenant are, “Incline your ear, and come unto me; hear, and your soul shall live.” There is more than the mere dawn of prophetic light here also.

We have already before us, indeed, almost every element of prophetic light, concerning the Messiah in his future earthly relationship heavenly things remained a mystery still; but very full revelation is afforded in the remaining prophetic books of the Old Testament as to the earthly things of the future kingdom.

JEREMIAH presents formally the making of a new covenant with the house of Judah and Israel, in connection with full and solemn announcements of most of the grand events already seen in previous scriptures See for example chapters 30 and 31.

EZEKIEL sets forth the departure of the glory from its earthly habitation, and then its future return; showing the actings of a grand confederacy, of eastern nations chiefly, against the land and nations of Israel, at the period when the people shall have returned and settled in the land. This confederacy is quite distinct from that western one, which, under Antichrist, shall be leagued with Jerusalem, and for a time deceive the Jews. This one, of Gog and Magog, will transpire somewhat later than that of Antichrist Composed of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal, and apparently of the remaining of the nations, which are outside the beast and Antichrist, it assaults the land, after a season of quiet repose in the land has been enjoyed by God's people. It seems to be a Russian aggression that is here predicted. It is judged of God, and then all the earth is quiet, and all commotions at an end. As to the glory, see Ezek. 11:23, and 43:1 to 7; and respecting the confederacy, see chapters 37 to 39.

DANIEL reveals the great facts of the times of the Gentiles. Four empires should successively rule over and oppress the rebellious nation of the Jews. Yet but one grand idea is seen throughout the course of all these empires. It is man's unity of power, having its rise from Babylon, in opposition to God's unity, which must have its seat at Jerusalem. Thus all Gentile unity, whether secular or ecclestical, is Babylon. And Babylon literal and secular, and Babylon mystical and ecclesiastical, will perish beneath the manifestation of Messiah's power, in the future day. The stone shall grind to powder the image; not convert it. The judgment shall sit, and the beast, with its sovereign horn, shall be cast into the lake of fire. The heavens shall rule. The kingdom, the reign, of heaven shall be set up. See Daniel chapters 2, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12.

In HOSEA, is the Scripture apparently referred to by the Lord, in the words which were so startling to the disciples: “The Son of man goeth as it is written of him.” Thus in chapter 5:15, we have the emphatic declaration, “I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offense: in their affliction they will seek me early.” How exactly was this fulfilled, after the Lord had uttered the solemn resolution: “Your house is left unto you desolate, for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.”

JOEL presents, amidst much else that is important, the “great and terrible day of the Lord.” It shall transpire “in those days, and in that time, when Jehovah shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem.” Mark this well. Then shall be the treading of the winepress and then also the harvest. This helps to a right decision as to the same event in Matt. 13; as also that in Rev. 14. The harvest is not the end of the globe, but merely of the peculiar era which is concluded by it. See Joel 3.

ZEPHANIAH furnishes a complete reply to any question respecting the kind of circumstances which shall be introductory of the reign of the Messiah. Mark the word “then” in its connection, in the following passage:

“Therefore wait ye upon me, saith the Lord, Until the day that I rise up to the prey;

For my determination is to gather the nations, —that I may assemble the kingdoms, To pour upon them mine indignation even all my fierce anger; For all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousy.

For THEN will I turn to the people a pure language, That they may all call upon the name of the Lord, —to serve him with one consent.”

There is no ambiguity here as to the how the latter day shall be introduced. It shall be “then” —in connection with the terrible crisis predicted: “THEN will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve him with one consent.”

ZECHARIAH, in the use of the type of Joshua, son of Josedek, the high priest, seems to set forth one far greater than he.

“Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, Behold, the man whose name is The BRANCH;

And he shall grow up out of his place,-and he shall build the temple of the Lord:

Even he shall build the temple of the Lord; —and he shall bear the glory, And shall sit and rule upon his throne; —and he shall be a priest upon his throne:

And the counsel of peace shall be between them both.”

How distinct and beautiful the truths enunciated here. This potentate shall be a priest also, “a priest upon his throne.” “And the counsel of peace shall be between them both.” The KING shall be enabled to enter into a counsel of peace, even with the way-ward Jew, through the medium of his own priesthood. To exercise mercy, there must be priesthood. Yet the potentate might have reigned without showing mercy; and so consequently without any mediation. Mediatorship was not essential to the sovereignty of the Son of man. In order to the exercise of grace, it was necessary; but not in order to the exercise of righteous sovereignty. Whence, then, the notion of a “mediatorial reign?” There is mediatorial priesthood, and there is gracious sovereignty as the result. But the two, though united in one person, are distinct thoughts pertaining to offices perfectly distinct in nature. The one may exist, nay does exist, without the other. The priesthood is exercised now, not the sovereignty. The king indeed is born, and his title to the throne committed to his hands; but he has not ascended his throne as yet; not “taken to himself” the actual exercise of the royal power. “Mediatorial reign,” then, is simply confusion. There is no mediatorial reign. There is mediatorial priesthood, and there is to be delegated sovereignty; sovereignty committed by God to the hands of the Son of man, even a millennial sway. But a “mediatorial reign,” we repeat it, is simply nonsense. A gracious reign will result from mediation, but there is all the difference of cause and effect between them.

In this prophetic book we have, also, one of the most solemn pictures of the great day of Jehovah's interference.

“Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, And thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee.

For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle;

And the city shall be taken, —and the houses rifled, and the women ravished;

And half of the city shall go forth into captivity, And the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then shall the Lord go forth, And fight against those nations—as when he fought in the day of battle.

And his feet shall stand in that day Upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, And the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof. Toward the east and toward the west—and there shall be a very great valley;

And half of the mountain shall remove towards the north—and half of it toward the south:

And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains;

For the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal: Yea, shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake In the days of Uzziah king of Judah:

And the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with thee.”

We give this as a specimen, once for all, of the grand crisis which must transpire around Jerusalem. In how many Scriptures is not this “gathering of nations” predicted! It is, too, when the captivity of the Jews shall terminate; not at its commencement. It is no past crisis that is here described. It is certainly future. And it is when “the Lord God shall come, and all the saints with him.” We know, by subsequent revelations, that there will be a coming of Jehovah manifested in the flesh. Is not the coming here spoken of that same personal coming? This prophecy does not reveal the mode of the coming which is predicted. We could not from this Scripture only, determine it. But surely, in the light of subsequent predictions, we may be assured that it is none other than the second personal return of the Lord Jesus that is here foretold.

MALACHI, too, furnishes testimony to the great events of the future; we can furnish one brief quotation only:

“For behold, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven;

And all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble; And the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, That it shall leave them neither root nor branch.

But unto you that fear my name Shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; And ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.

And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet In the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord of hosts.

Such is the tenor of the predictions of the Old Testament. The introduction, by a crisis of mingled mercy and judgment, of the universal reign of a king appointed by Jehovah, is the grand feature of them all. But there is a mystery yet behind. This king is to have a heavenly bride, as well as earthly subjects. This the Old Testament does not reveal. For this wondrous thought we must proceed to the New. The Church-the body of the saints of the present interval, between the departure and the return of the Lord Jesus—was not the subject of Old Testament predictions. The saints of that past dispensation shall sit down in the heavenly places of the future kingdom in the presence of the king as his friends, the “friends” of the bridegroom, and they shall rejoice to see him take his bride; but they shall not be of the bride. The saints of the future period shall be reigned over by the king, but they shall not reign with him, as the bride shall. There are spheres of glory; there are gradations in the kingdom. The “heavenly things” were subsequent revelation. Earthly things shall be the portion of Israel, and the nations. Heavenly things, as well as royalty over earthly things, are the portion of the bridegroom, of the bride, and of their “friends.” “That in the dispensation of the fullness of times, he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in him.”

The day succeeds the dawn. The dawning light brightens into noon-day splendor. We direct attention onwards to that “completion” of the word of God which was vouchsafed to the apostles, especially to Paul. And we conclude these very hasty sketches of a few leading features only, of God's progressive revelation, in the words of that highly favored apostle—— “Whereby, when you read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ; which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit; that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel; whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power. Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ; and to make all men see, what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might Leviticus known, by the church, the manifold wisdom of God.” Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus, throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.

Psalm 42: Fragment

Our only place of blessing is to be spiritually sensible of the evil around us. Still it is most important that we should not in spirit get down from heaven. We should have God between us and our troubles, not our troubles between us and God. We shall then neither be insensible nor breaking down, “while they say, where is thy God?” —Where is the Holy Ghost in the church? There is an energy of faith which may be an instrument of display; but there is a dependence of faith which cannot be taken away from us. “Hope thou in God” was abstractedly all that was left. God was between the soul and his afflictions, though he had nothing but God. It is healthful to our souls to be looking out to the glory; no good to know the evil if not in communion with the glory. It would discourage the heart and unsanctify it. Satan is very anxious to tell us of evil, if he can only make it the instrument of his power on the heart. But if we can look out clean beyond it to the glory, we can bear to survey the evil in all its extent

When we partake of the divine nature through a grace which has set us in perfect peace as in ourselves, we can love in a divine way and love righteousness in a divine way. Otherwise we cannot. We must have a loveable object to call out a corresponding affection, or it will be an idolatrous passion towards an unworthy object. To love in supreme sovereign goodness is an absolutely divine quality. “God is love.” Hence, at once, the apostle says, “He that loveth is born of God and knoweth God;” he derives this from God, and God is supreme object of it. This characterizes the divine nature as communicated to us. I can also understand and delight in righteousness in itself, and holiness, being made partaker of His holiness, and renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created me in righteousness and true holiness. But while conscience has anything to say, I cannot love it simply, though the conscience may see it to be right and good, because I cannot and ought not to love to be condemned, nor ought I to be content to be defiled, supposing goodness to be as great as may be. A believer knows God's love to be supreme and infinite, because it reached him as a sinner—supreme, because there was nothing lovely; infinite, because nothing is so far from supreme love as enmity against it; and that was the condition of his proud heart.

Rabbinical Criticism on the History of John the Baptist

In a recent number of the Jewish Chronicle there appeared an essay by Rabbi Isidor Kalisch, United States, the drift of which is to prove, if possible, that John the Baptist was a fictitious personage. Dr. Benisch also wishes to show thereby that intelligent Jews may and do read the Gospels with a strengthened conviction of their spuriousness. With what success the Rabbi and the editor of the Jewish Chronicle have stepped into the arena of evangelical controversy, our readers may soon judge.

The opening objection is, that “by the accounts given by the evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and John, John the Baptist appeared like a Deus ex machina; nobody knows whence he came, or how old he was when he obtained some influence over the people by preaching to and baptizing them.” Now, if these were the only notices given in the New Testament, such a remark would be captious enough. Let R. I. K. apply the same measure to the “important personage” of Gen. 14. Is not the introduction of the royal priest of Salem more abrupt and less authenticated, as far as human witnesses are concerned, while neither father nor mother is named? Over his beginning and his end there hangs an impenetrable cloud. Nobody knows whence he came, or how old he was when he obtained such paramount influence over the father of the faithful, that he gave him tithes of all. Incomparably more than John the Baptist does Melchizedek resemble a Deus ex machina, yet unlike his unbelieving seed, Abram stumbles not, but bows down for his blessing; and without all contradiction, the less is blessed of the greater. Moses alone recounts the wonderful facts; David long after refers to this mysterious priest as the type of Messiah. There is far more semblance of “meagerness” in their combined references to Melchizedek, than in any one of the New Testament accounts of John the Baptist. Every one of the evangelists implies that the forerunner of the Lord Jesus was notorious to all Judea, and that the effects of his preaching were marked and wide-spread, from Jerusalem throughout all the region round about Jordan. His person and his mode of life, his preaching and his baptizing, his imprisonment and his death, are so narrated as to leave no other conclusion open, unless these modern Jews are prepared to throw overboard their own ancient traditions, and to maintain that Matthew, Mark, and John, with their several histories, are unreal, no less than John the Baptist.

But, besides meagerness, it is alleged that contradictions “appear, partly in each account, and partly by comparing the accounts with each other.” The first is suppose to result from a comparison of Matt. 3:15, 16, with chap. 11:3. “How could such a question have been put if John had indeed baptized Jesus, and witnessed all that is mentioned in chap. 11:5?” But there is nothing herein save the sad and common lesson of man's failure. Much better might one cry out at the breaking down of the apostles themselves, and especially of Peter somewhat later; and yet the evangelists record this, yea, to their own shame. With equal reason might the Rabbi exclaim about David, Joshua, Aaron, Moses, Jacob, Abraham, and all, in short, from Adam downwards, —all save the Lord Jesus Himself. John, the herald of Messiah, was in prison, insulted and suffering, instead of triumphant. What could be more stumbling to faith, if human feeling wrought for a moment? Doubtless, this was not to believe the Lord, to sanctify Him in the eyes of the children of Israel. John the Baptist faltered under a heavy trial, as the apostle and the high priest of the Jewish profession had done before. Moreover, the Rabbi is mistaken in affirming that John the Baptist witnessed all that is mentioned in chapter 11:5. This does not look like reading the gospels attentively, much less examining them critically, but rather eyeing them with the rash malice of an enemy. On the contrary, Matt. 11:2 tends to show that John had (not seen but) heard in the prison the works of the Messiah. John's disciples were desired to report to their master what they heard and saw. The miracles of Jesus were such and so great as to reassure a wavering heart, not to speak of the glad tidings preached to the poor—the last and best of all. “And blessed is he,” adds the Lord, “whosoever shall not be offended in me.” Jesus of Nazareth is the stumbling stone! Thus, even if John the Baptist had witnessed those miracles, which is contrary to the evidence, it would only show that he was but, too, like his Israelitish fathers, who believed Jehovah's word, sang His praise, and soon forgat all His works.

Still more groundless is the next “contradiction.” It is the fruit of interpreting Matt. 3:1 Perversely, so as to make it clash with Luke 3:2, 3. The obvious answer is that Matthew does not place the baptism of Jesus under Archelaus; on the contrary, he leaves abundant space for successors, if need were, between chaps. 2:22, 23, and chap. 3:1. “In those days” does not refer to the days of Archelaus, but to the interval during which the Holy Family dwelt in Nazareth. Luke gives the precise date of our Lord's baptism, which Matthew in no way professes to do. Jesus was yet a young child when Joseph left Egypt, and Archelaus reigned over Judea, whereas the baptizing in chap. 3 supposes the lapse of a quarter of a century. Then He who must be spared no shame in life or death, in a dwelling-place, or without one, emerged from the obscure and reproached shelter of so many blameless years, and was baptized of John in the Jordan. The Rabbi's gloss is the evidence of not of intelligent perusal.

The most frivolous assault, perhaps, is that on Luke 1 which is said to be legendary, not historical. The first reason is so obscurely stated, that it is hard to know what is meant, but it seems founded on the improbability of Zechariah's using the same words as Abraham (Gen. 15:8; Luke 1:13), and this unbelievingly! The second is the absurd pretense that the prophecy of Luke 1:20 was not fulfilled. The words of the angel did not promise the removal of the sentence when John the Baptist should be born, but made it impossible before. And God chose a most happy and suited moment when those who rejoiced at the child's birth came together for his circumcision, and learned from the mother's word and the father's writing that his name was John. “Thou,” said the angel to Zacharias, “shalt call his name John. . . And, behold, thou shalt be dumb and not able to speak, until the day that these things shall be performed.” Just so, when his father named the child which was a sign of “these things,” his mouth was opened immediately, and his tongue loosed, and he spake and praised God. The angel did not appoint the time eight days before.

The closing observations we are little concerned with, as they are an attack, not on the New Testament, but on the fifth chapter of Josephus' Antiq. Lib. 18, which the Rabbi denounces as “smuggled in by Christian hands.” An idea so much the more unfounded, as Josephus' history, while it wonderfully tallies with the Evangelists as to both Herod and Herodias on the one hand, and John's godliness, preaching, baptizing, and vast influence on the other, differs, nevertheless, from the New Testament account of the cause of John's death. Is it not absurd to argue that Christians would foist into a Jew's writings that which materially varies from their own inspired works?

The Re-Translation or Revision of the Bible: No. 1

It is not God's desire that any of His intelligent creatures should remain in ignorance of His will as far as He has been pleased to communicate it. Great in counsel, excellent in working, His plans, when unfolded by the Holy Ghost, must ever afford delight and occupation to those who, whatever may be their rank in the universe, know that He is God, and that they are His servants.

“The angels that excel in strength do His will, hearkening to the voice of His Word.” Possessed of finite intelligence, the revelation of what has been for ages hidden in the mind of God does afford them subjects for meditation as they see His counsels gradually unveiled before their eyes; and kept by God, “the elect angels” as the Word describes them, what He does, and what He says has for them an interest beyond anything else. For what can interest a creature, whose heart is right with God, so much as that which concerns Him, and redounds to His glory? Accordingly we read, that they desire to look into the things concerning the Lord Jesus, now reported unto us by them that have preached the gospel unto us with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. (1 Peter 1:12.) They learn there, not only God's will for them, and the service He would have them render to the heirs of salvation, but God's mind and purpose about His Son; His wonderful plan of salvation and everlasting blessing for sinners; the manner by which all that He is can be displayed; His authority, where it has been impugned, be vindicated, and Himself be fully glorified. For all this, though not yet to be recorded as having a place in the history of the universe, is nevertheless the subject of divine revelation. God has spoken of it, and from His words His creatures may now learn what He will yet do. So interested then are the angels in all that concerns God, that, although this revelation was made for man, and for the most part direct from God to man, they desire to look into it. By the church is now made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenlies the manifold wisdom of God. (Eph. 3:10.) From His word, by the prophets, they learned the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow. For the announcement of that wonder of wonders, the humiliation and death of the Son of God, was made to man, not angels. The predictions of what He would do, and how low He would stoop, was first disclosed in the word of the Lord by the prophets.

What an honor has God put on His prophets, His apostles, the church! The children of Adam, according to the flesh, have become in His goodness mid favor the medium of communicating to the angelic hosts the counsels of God, till then hidden in the secret recesses of His heart. Men, not angels, have been the general depositaries of His truth, regarding His Son, the destiny of this world, and all connected with it. They needed a revelation, for they were fallen, and, without it, must have perished forever. They are more directly concerned in it, because, if believers on Christ—children of God, they are heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ. They have a place before God, and a relationship to Him, such as no angel can aspire to. They have an association with the Lord Jesus Christ, such as none but the redeemed can enjoy. All then, that God has been pleased to reveal, should surely interest His children. I Shall we rest satisfied with the knowledge of salvation and deliverance for ourselves from everlasting wrath? Had the elect angels no interest outside the knowledge of their personal safety, they would not have been described as looking into the things concerning the Lord Jesus. Should we not, sensible of the favor shown to us, desire to become acquainted with this revelation, whether it directly bears upon our personal salvation, or not? Has God been, for a period of 4000 years, unfolding step by step His mind, and shall we be careless about the terms He has employed? Shall He confide to us the manner of the kingdom, or the course of events, which must precede its establishment in power after our removal from this earth, and shall we listen to it as unconcerned and unwilling auditors? Meager, indeed, must that soul's apprehension be of the favor conferred on it as a child of God, if it cares not to know all that its Father has told it. Selfish must he be, who, satisfied with the confidence of his own safety, cares not to hear about what concerns God's well-beloved Son. What interests God should interest us; what concerns His Son should concern us. The very words of the divine revelation should have a value in our eyes unsurpassed, nay, unequaled. God has written down His thoughts for man's instruction, for His children's edification. This should be reason enough for us. God saw fit, that we should have not a dim, hazy, tradition, of what He had once communicated to us, but, that the very terms, in which it had been made, should be handed down to the latest generations. It is a written revelation we possess, dictated by the Spirit of God, not in words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth. (1 Cor. 2:13.) Then these Scriptures, the several books which together we call the Bible, are holy. The subjects of which they treat, the thoughts which they communicate, the words in which they are clothed, are all from God for man's use and guidance.

Moreover, it is a selected revelation. We have not recorded in it all that God has revealed during these 4000 years to His people. Jonah prophesied of the restoration of the coasts of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain. The fulfillment of God's Word is recorded, but the terms of the revelation have not been preserved. (2 Kings 14:25.) Paul writes of having heard unspeakable words, which it is not possible for a man to utter. (2 Cor. 12:4.)

John heard the voice of the seven thunders, but was forbidden to record what they said. (Rev. 10:4.) And the same apostle tells us, that many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this hook; but these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that, believing, ye might have life through His name. And if all had been written, the whole world could not contain the books that should be written. (John 20:30, 31; 21:25.)

Again, we would call attention to the languages chosen, by which to convey the thoughts of God, as an additional proof that what was written, and so carefully selected, was for man's use and guidance. In Hebrew, Chaldee, and Greek, has the Spirit of God been pleased to write. He spake by the disciple; on the day of Pentecost, in many different tongues. In three only has He written what, it pleased God we should be acquainted with. To them must we turn, if we would learn the exact sayings of the Spirit about the Son of God, about man, about the world, the final destiny of the human race, and the earth on which we tread. And each of these languages, when employed, was just the best medium that could have been found, by which to publish far and wide the acts and purposes of God. Hebrew, the language of Palestine, as the names of places and people, before Israel possessed it, indicate the adopted language of Abraham and his descendants, as the difference between the language of Jacob and that of Laban, the Mesopotamian, clearly shows (Gen. 31:47.) Hebrew was also the language of commerce, the Phoenicians being the great carriers of the world in their days. Westward, along the Mediterranean to the far off Islands of the Cassiterides they penetrated, Eastward, down the Red Sea, along the Eastern Coast of Africa, and to India they found their way. The navies of Solomon, too, in the days of Israel's greatest glory, went to Ophir. By such means, the knowledge of the Hebrew tongue must have been extended beyond the confines of Canaan, and so an opportunity have been afforded of letting men, of different nations, speaking languages of different families from the Semitic, hear something of the wonders and truth of that God who, was worshipped in such splendor at Jerusalem as Jehovah God of Hosts. How far, through the faithlessness of Israel, this result fell short of what might have been, we have not now to inquire. We have only to do with the fact that God chose this language, in which, for 1100 years, with only a brief interval, He communicated His thoughts to men. Was it a mere accident, as men would say, that Hebrew was the language selected; was it not rather from design? For what other tongue could have answered the end so well? Abraham gave up his native tongue for the language of Canaan; but God was by this preparing for that time, when His word should not only be written on tables of stone, or altars, in Canaan, so that Israel could understand it, but be recorded in that tongue, some knowledge of this must have extended, as names of places to this day testify, wherever the great merchants of Tire and Sidon penetrated with their wares.

With the rise of the first of the four great empires, which were to exercise supreme authority within the prophetic earth, the Aramean or Chaldee language came into prominence. A language foreign to the Jews in the days of Hezekiah, not understood by the common people when Rabshakeh appeared before Jerusalem, it was afterward to be the tongue in which they would converse, when Hebrew would cease to be spoken in ordinary society. Hence we have the Targums, the translations (and often very free ones), of the sacred writings of the Old Testament. But, before the Jews had dropped the pure Hebrew, God made choice of Chaldee to make known the better thereby to the nations what it behooved them to be informed of. First used in Jer. 10:11 for the message sent by Him to the Gentiles, it was afterward the language in which God's communications to Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar were made, and His gracious intervention on behalf of His suffering servants in the reigns of Nebuchadnezzar and Darius recorded. From chapter 2:4 to the end of chapter 7 of the book of Daniel the original is in Chaldee. A glance at the book shows the wisdom of this. God would teach the Gentiles that, though they had triumphed over the kingdom of Judah, they had not triumphed over Jehovah: their gods had not given them the victory. He, and He alone, was the true God, the God of heaven. Those portions, therefore, which concerned the latter days, and the vicissitudes of the city and people, are written in Hebrew; but those portions, which were designed to remind the Gentiles, that God had vindicated His honor, and manifested His power to save those faithful to Him, are in Chaldee. The wisdom of man is found incapable of explaining the thoughts of God, chapter 2. The power of man is powerless to destroy those who trust in God, chapter 3. The pride of man is humbled, and God alone is to be exalted, chap. iv. The impiety of man is signally punished, chapter 5. The hostility of men to God's servant ends in their utter discomfiture and death, chapter 6. And lastly, the counsels of God, as to supreme dominion over the earth, are revealed, ending with the establishment of that kingdom which shall never be destroyed, chapter 7. In Ezra we get another portion written in Chaldee, chapter 4:8,—6:19; and chapter 7:12-27, just that part of the history which records God's interventions on behalf of the oppressed and feeble remnant, now returned to their own land, that the Gentiles might learn, that Jehovah could, and did, protect His faithful people; that His word, by the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, could stimulate them to work, though the decree had as yet not been reversed in their favor; and, that He could turn the hearts of Darius, and Artaxerxes to favor them, and to take an interest in the work of His house at Jerusalem.

The ages were rolling by. The time was approaching when the hope of Israel should appear, and the mystery, kept secret, since the world began—the Church—should be unfolded. It is deeply interesting to trace how God was preparing for the advent of His Son, that, when He should appear, and the Scripture, be appealed to in support of His claims as the promised seed and Messiah, the nations of the earth should have within their reach a translation of the word of God, made by Jews, and accepted by the bitterest foe of the truth, as generally correct, to which they could appeal, and see for themselves, when subject to the Spirit, as the Bereans did, (Acts 17:11, 12,) whether or not Jesus was the Christ. The great center of trade had ceased to be found at Tire. The language of commerce was no longer Phoenician, or Hebrew, but Greek. A Greek translation became a desideratum for the Jews of the dispersion. About the year 280 B.C. this want was supplied; and when God next caused fresh revelations to be written, He chose not Hebrew, nor Chaldee, but Greek, the language then generally understood throughout the Roman earth. In the Roman senate, as well as at Jerusalem, Greek might have been heard. To the strangers of the dispersion Peter wrote in Greek. To the Roman Christians, as well as to the Hebrews, Paul dictated, what the Holy Ghost would have him say, in Greek. The twelve tribes, scattered abroad, had a message addressed specially to themselves, but James announced it in Greek. At Rome, at Alexandria, at Ephesus, at Antioch, at Jerusalem, Greek was understood; so in Greek the New Testament was written, that it might be read far and wide by Gentiles as well as Jews. What care then has God taken that His word should be made known, by using the language, best adapted for it, at the different periods of its delivery; that not merely the general sense, but the very words, in which His mind was expressed, might be within the reach, as far as possible, of those concerned!

Passing from the age of revelations, we may still trace God's care for His word, in the manner He provided for its dissemination through the medium of translations. As the knowledge of Greek declined, a Latin translation for the Christians in the western part of the Roman empire became a necessity, and, when needed, believers found their want met. For the Churches of North Africa, as early as the second century, a Latin translation had been made from the Greek, called the Vetus Latina. Subsequently some parts of the New Testament, the Gospels at least, were translated in North Italy, and called Versio Pala. Jerome first connected portions of these two, which, in his day, had become blended together, and afterward translated the Old Testament directly from the Hebrew. As years passed on his version was mixed up with the preceding ones, and hence was formed that Latin version now known as the Vulgate. Containing some gross doctrinal errors, and others not affecting doctrine, it was, nevertheless, for centuries the only translation in which the Scriptures could be read by the greater part of the nations of Western Europe. From it Bede translated. From it Aelfric likewise in the 10th century translated portions of the Old Testament. From it Wicliff learned God's truth, and then translated the New Testament for the benefit of his countrymen. Thus a Latin translation, first made for the Christians of North Africa, was destined to be the only source for ages from which God's saints would learn that truth which satisfies the soul. With the dawn of the Reformation access to the original sources was reopened; and the invention of printing brought within the reach of many the Scriptures in the original tongues. Then afresh translations were made. German, English, French, Italian, and Spanish versions by degrees appeared, made more or less directly from the Hebrew and Greek. Tyndale was the first who translated the New Testament for English readers. With the Greek before him he nevertheless was influenced by the Vulgate; and thus, even in the present day, the authorized version bears traces of the influence that translation one exercised over the Western Churches. Tyndale's New Testament appeared in 1525 A.D., the Old Testament a little later. After him Coverdale brought out a translation of the Bible in 1535; Matthews in 1537; Taverner in 1539; Cranmer's Bible appeared in that same year. The Genevan version was published in 1557-1560, and the Bishop's in 1568-1572. Some preferring the Genevan, others the Bishop's, at length in 1611 came out the Authorized version, which, after some years, was generally accepted as the English version. Here too we may trace the goodness of God. The value of having one version, not two or more in common use, is great. Before therefore the Colonial empire of Great Britain had attained to its colossal greatness; before the different denominations in England and her colonies had appeared, or been molded into distinct separate bodies; before the English tongue had spread over so large a portion of the earth's surface, and jealousies between the mother country and her colonies had led the latter to regard with suspicion anything emanating by royal authority from the former, the Authorized version appeared; and, wherever the English language is spoken, or English enterprise has penetrated, thither that version has been carried, and wherever English or American missionaries have gone, and provided the natives with a translation in their own language, the influence of the Authorized version is felt, the value of one commonly accepted translation attested. Are these slight advantages? Was this the result of accident, or of design!

But here arises a further question. Is this version a faithful one? Is it a translation which admits of amendment? Is the cry for revision the cry of people ignorant of the subject, or the simple candid expression of minds competent to form a correct opinion about it?

From 1702, when an essay appeared by Ross proposing a new translation, the question of revision has not been allowed to slumber for any length of time. Lowth, Seeker, Newcome, Blayney, Pilkington, Brett, have in one way or other advocated it. Kennicott, by the publication of various readings of the Hebrew text, and suggested emendations of the Authorized version, stimulated the desire for it. The labors of eminent scholars on the Greek Testament, names familiar to many of our readers, have shown that the received text, and Beza's text, were neither of them an accurate representation of the Greek original. The labors of textual critics in our days have confirmed this, and demonstrated that, in certain passages, the true reading, supported by every great authority, differs from that known, and followed, when the Authorized version was made; and scholars have shown, that, in other passages, a correct version of the original would differ from that given by King James's translators. We must not shut our eyes to all this. A version, which could command the general assent of all Protestant bodies, would be an inestimable boon. Meanwhile the calling attention to passages needing revision is a work of real service. All that any one proposes he can scarcely hope will be accepted; yet it will not be time thrown away if, giving what he thinks is a more correct translation of the original, he brings out into prominence some shade of meaning, which has been hitherto unperceived. We are well aware that, in a matter of this kind, mere assertion is of no avail without proof of what is asserted. Our proofs we must reserve for other articles.

C. E. S.

The Re-Translation or Revision of the Bible: No. 2

IT would have been strange if, after all the learning and diligent labors of Biblical students for the last 200 years, no advance had been made in philological studies. Strange, too, would it have been, if the science of textual criticism had not progressed since the authorized version was made. Much, that was then unknown, has been since elucidated. The meaning of words, but seldom met with in the Hebrew Scriptures, has been in many cases cleared up by a comparison with other languages of the Semitic group. Greek phrases have been illustrated from classical authors. The grammar of the different languages has also been attended to, and much light thrown on that department of study, so needful for an accurate acquaintance with the meaning that the Spirit of God intended should be conveyed. The texts, too, of both the Old and New Testaments have been subjected to a rigorous examination. Since that day MSS., then unknown, have been brought to light, and the readings they present of the New Testament have in many instances been given to the world. ΑΒCDFaILNPQRTYZΓΔθΛΞא and a few others, fragments of the Gospels; ABCDEFaIא of the Acts and Catholic Epistles; ΑΒCDGFaHIא of the Epistles of Paul; ABCs of the Revelation have been published, and the readings of others collated. When the authorized version appeared, the Codex Vaticanus (B) was known, but not collated; the Codex Alexandrinus (A) had not been published; Codex Bone (D of the Gospel and Acts) was known, but its peculiar readings had not been accurately determined; the Codex Sinaiticus (א) was still hidden in the convent-library of Mount Sinai, and the Nitrian MSS. had not given forth their treasures to the world. Now materials have been amassed for revising the texts of both the Hebrew and the Greek Scriptures.

If we speak of the, Hebrew Scriptures, the labors of Kennicott and De Rossi must be mentioned. If we speak of the Greek Scriptures, Walton, Mill, Bentley, Bengel, Wetstein, must not be forgotten. But these laborers, while searching out and recording readings, did not publish a revised text, being contented for the most part with stating the readings of MSS. worthy of attention; and what Wetstein and others attempted in regard to the New Testament, that Boothroyd did for the Old, by publishing an edition of the Hebrew Scriptures, with the important readings, ascertained by Kennicott and De Rossi, noted at the bottom of the page.

In 1775-7, a new era dawned on textual criticism. Griesbach then first published a critical text of the New Testament. Scholz, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Alford, have since followed his example; whilst Hamilton, in 1821, published his Codex Criticus of the Hebrew Bible, the first attempt to form a critical text of the Old Testament.

By the labors of these and other scholars, what, it is pertinent to ask, has been accomplished? Have they demonstrated the perfection of the text from which the authorized version was made? Does the authorized version, when critically examined, faithfully represent the meaning of the originals?

At this point the subject divides itself into an inquiry regarding the Hebrew Scriptures, and the translation made from them; and another and separate question—the condition of the text of the Greek Testament, and the translation made from it. Throughout this article we shall confine ourselves to an examination, brief though it must be, of the Old Testament, as presented by the authorized version; and the first question that meets us is this, What is the condition of the common Hebrew text? By what standard shall we try it? How shall we determine its accuracy?

As for the Hebrew, so for the Greek, there are three sources to which we can turn to help us to an understanding of what the text originally was, viz., MSS., versions, and quotations from early Christian writers. A more formidable difficulty, however, presents itself at the outset, when we come to inquire about the Hebrew text, than when we examine into the accuracy of the common Greek text. The Hebrew MSS., though by no means few in number, are nearly all of one recension, exhibiting for the most part the readings approved of by the Masoretic scribes. Their age, too, when compared with the antiquity of some MSS. of the New Testament, is comparatively modern. The Hebrno-Samaritan Pentateuch, i.e., the Pentateuch in Samaritan characters, preserved by the small and decreasing sect of the Samaritans, which we might have expected would have been of the greatest use as a concurrent witness of what Moses wrote, often differs from the Hebrew so much, that its readings would require support ere being accepted in preference to that text handed down by the Jews. In one place it has substituted Gerizim for Ebal (Deut. 27:4), to favor the Samaritan worship. In others, its accuracy is open to grave suspicion.

Of ancient versions, the LXX, the Chaldee Targums, the Syriac, the Greek versions of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, as much as are extant, and the Vulgate, where it exhibits the text of Jerome's Latin version, are of great value, and often support readings differing from those of the common Hebrew text. Some of these have the support of MSS. authority. Others may reflect a text, very ancient, but no longer extant in Hebrew; but without MSS. authority such readings we could scarcely venture to incorporate with the generally accredited text. For he would be, a bold critic who would amend the Hebrew by the readings supposed to have been adopted by the translators of the LXX, and other versions, however ancient, though the variations found in the different translations deserve to be noted. Lowth and Houbigant have attempted this, but it must be evident that conjecture of what ancient translators had before them is slender ground on which to meddle authoritatively with the Hebrew or Chaldee.

Of quotations from the early Christian writers, those are of value which men, as Jerome and Origen, conversant with the Hebrew, have preserved, who tell us often what the text was in their day. The works of Jewish writers should also be consulted.

By the common Hebrew text is to be understood that published by Van Der Hooght at Amsterdam, in 1705, in two volumes, 8vo. This was the text Kennicott used, and is the one generally reprinted, and answers in Hebrew to the textus receptus of the Greek Testament.

A few various readings are here subjoined. If the reader desires to be further informed on this subject, he should consult Davidson's Revision of the Hebrew Text of the Old Testament.

Gen. 49:10, Shiloh, H,;r3. Sonie MSS. read Sheloh, ri5V supported by the Hebreo-Samaritan (hereafter in this article quoted. as Sam.), LXX., Syriac, the Targums of Onkelos and Jerusalem, and the Greek translations of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, and many Jewish authorities. Jerome, with the Vulgate, translates “qui mittendus est,” as if deriving the word from rr'•t') to send. For the common reading, many MSS. can be adduced, and the Grmco-Venet. version. If the Hebrew text be followed, the word must be taken as an appellation of the one predicted. If the other reading be preferred (and it does seem best accredited, the word Sheloh must be translated “whose it is,” i.e., to whom the government belongs, and be regarded as equivalent to i5 71;i: of Ezek. 21:27, translated “whose it is.” “The scepter shall not depart ... until He comes, whose it is.”

Deut. 33:2, “A fiery law” n1 tt;ki two words as commonly printed, but to be read as one:rum according to the Masora. Many MSS. with Sam. agree in this. Accepting this correction, the word, which means “Springs,” must be regarded as a proper name. Sinai, Seir, Paran having been mentioned, the sacred writer speaks of two others, Meribah Kadesh, here translated “with ten thousand of saints,” and Ashdoth (as the two words joined together form) translated “a fiery law.” The verse would then mean, as Fuerst has translated it, “Jehovah came from Sinai, and appeared to them from Seir; He appeared in brightness from Paran, He came forth to them out of Meribah Kadesh, having Ashdoth at his right hand, i.e., on the south.” Ashdoth is the name of a place near the Dead Sea, in the south of the territory of Reuben (Josh. 13:20), Meribah Kadesh being in the wilderness of Zin (Num. 20). The LXX. leaves Kadesh untranslated κάδης, and renders the last clause, “at his right hand angels with him.” The Vulgate has probably here been the original of the English version.

2 Sam. 8:12-13 Syria, cis. Many MSS. supported by LXX. and Syriac, read “Edon,” are as in 1 Chron. 18, which seems correct, the valley of Salt being in Edoin (2 Kings 14:7.) The interchange of the letters (r) and (d) makes the difference.

Judg. 18:30, “Manasseh:” so many MSS. Others have the letter n enlarged; the common text has it suspended above the line, thus Manasseh. Some, followed by the Vulgate, omit n: so Jerome with some Jewish writers. Omitting the n, the word in Hebrew becomes Moses, who was the father of Gershom the Levite. Jewish tradition tells us the name was altered, that the shame of having an idolatrous priest in the genealogy should not rest on the house of the lawgiver. Probably Moses is the true reading. The LXX. reads Manasseh, but, being originally a Jewish translation, its authority here would be scarcely entitled to much weight. It shows, however, how early this alteration must have been made.

Josh. 21:36-37. These verses are omitted by the Masora. Very many MSS. with many printed editions, have them, and all the versions. The common text omits them. Without them the list of cities is incomplete.

Neh. 7:68 is an example of the converse. Whilst the common text retains the verse, very many MSS., the LXX. (Vatican text) and Syriac, omit it.

Again in 2 Sam. 14:21, the Masoretic text punctuates “thou hast done,” referring to Joab, whilst all the versions, and some MSS., agree with the English translation, which adheres to the written text or ch'thib 2,1, “I have done.” In 12:24, for “he called,” some MSS., with the Syriac, Targum, and approved of by the Masora, read “she called,” speaking of Bathsheba.

When and how some of the variations in the Hebrew arose, it would now be impossible to say. The origin of others, if their date be unknown, can however be easily traced. Similarity in the form of letters, as in examples already quoted, is one source of alterations; similarity in the sound of words is another, e.g., the substitution of k.i'; for i5, or vice versa.

1 Sam. 2:16. Here the authorized version following the common text, which reads i5 to him for t45 nay, has to supply the negative to make sense. Many MSS., with LXX., Syriac, Vulgate, and one of the Targums have the negative in the place of the pronoun and preposition. Isa. 49:5, the text of the authorized version gives one reading “be not gathered,” the margin has the other “gathered to him” The Vulgate here supports the authorized version. Some MSS. with LXX., Targum, and Aquila read as the margin without the negative. In 9:3, we meet with another example “not increased” (so Symachus and Vulgate); but the margin with several MSS. the Targum and Syriac read, “to it increased.” In these instances probably the best attested reading is that which differs from the common text, and the authorized version which follows it. In 63:9, the authorized version differs from the common text, and follows that supported by many MSS., the Talmud, and Jewish writers, “He was afflicted,” lit. “to him there was affliction.” But the LXX., Syriac, and Vulgate agree in the substitution of the negative for the pronoun and preposition, though they differ as to the translation of the clause. If we follow the text here which many prefer, we must translate somewhat as follows: “In all their afflictions he was not an adversary;” or, “in all their straits he was not straitened.”

A comparison of the variations of the Hebrew with those of the Greek, will show that in the latter the alterations are often more important, and affect more materially the sense and form of a passage, than is generally the case in the former. This is easily accounted for by the reverence amounting almost, if not quite, to superstition with which the Jews regarded the originals. Though blinded to the full meaning of the word, they took great care of it. They would not alter, as a rule, a letter of the text, even if that letter was enlarged, reversed, or misplaced. They handed down the text as they found it, after they had settled in an early age of the Christian era what they believed it to be; but noted in the margin what they conceived should be read. Such corrections are termed ICH,,71P. “read,” and the text ell'thib, Tro “written.” Again, if a word had been accidentally dropped out of the text, they did not insert it. Its vowels would be found without the consonants to which they belonged, and a note would tell the reader that such a word should be read; see, for an example of this, Judg. 20:13. Yet, with all the care bestowed on the text, we cannot say it is faultless, or that readings have not crept into it, which were not in the originals as they came from the inspired writers. On the other hand, we should not be hasty in altering it, but we might have the important differences noted in the margin of the English Bible, as is already done in the case of some of the examples given above.

Turning from the text to the authorized version, let us see whether the translation at all times faithfully represents the meaning of the originals, in those places where the readings of the Hebrew are not open to doubt. We shall arrange the examples now to be quoted under different heads -

1. Passages, the translation of which depends on the meaning of one or more difficult or uncommon words.

Gen. 36:24, “mules,” neap rather “hotsprings,” so Vulgate. See Fuerst's Lexicon. The LXX leaves the word untranslated ἰαμείν. It occurs somewhere else.

Num. 14:34, “My breach of promise,” nitvr, “alienation” or withdrawal from anything; hence, metaphorically, “enmity.” Occurs elsewhere in Job 32:10. LXX, “the anger of my wrath,” θυμὸν τῆς ὀργῆς μου. Vulgate, ultionem steam, “my vengeance.”

Deut. 32:42, Judg. 5:2, “Revenges,” “avenging.” The noun 1711r13 occurs nowhere else. What can it mean? The context in Judges helps us to an understanding of it. A victory has been secured by the leaders and people of Israel. God is to be praised, the leaders having led, and the people having willingly offered themselves. This meaning is confirmed by the construction of the two clauses in Judg. 5:2, and by the meaning of the root r when compared with the Arabic, which has the sense of projecting, standing forth prominently. Hence, leadership suits the context in both places, “from the head of the princes of the enemy,” —(Deuteronomy)— “when the princes led in Israel, when the people willingly offered themselves.” In this sense the LXX translates in Deuteronomy, and Theodotion in Judges.

Judg. 5:7, 11, “The inhabitants of the villages ceased,” and “towards the inhabitants of his villages.” To make sense, the authorized version in both places supplies inhabitants of What, then, is the meaning of the word 151:1.p, which is met with nowhere else? The root riy: bears the sense of cleaving, dividing, hence judging, and thus the idea of a ruler, which suits the context, is arrived at. “As for a ruler they ceased in Israel.” “The righteous acts of His ruler.” The Vulgate has translated the word by fortes, the LXX in verse 7 by δυνατού. A kindred word is met with in Hab. 3:14, and nowhere else. There the authorized version introduces the idea, of “villages.” But ruler, or chief, will suit the context. The LXX has translated it by δυναστῶν. The Syriac, the Targums, and Jarchi, in the main agree with the idea of ruler; and the Vulgate translates it bellator.

V. 11, “They that are delivered from the noise of archers.” Here again, to make sense, the authorized version supplies a great deal. In Hebrew we have only two words. All turns on the meaning to be assigned to the participle, Piel, of sdfsd1-t. Pro. 30:27 here comes to our assistance, “The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands;” margin, “are gathered together,” ro. Hence the idea of an orderly procession, which suits the context in Judges, so we may translate “more than (i.e. louder than) the noise of men marching in procession.”

13:18, “a secret,” rather “wonderful,” so margin. He does not conceal His name. See Isa. 9:6, “His name shall be called Wonderful.” He, therefore, who appeared to Manoah was Jehovah Jesus.

Job 17:6, “And aforetime I was as a tabret,” In the previous clause Job speaks of himself as a byword. It is best to take this clause as describing something similar. The meaning then would be, “I am one whose face is spit upon,” i. e., an object of abomination before them. The word occurs elsewhere only as a proper name. Here the versions vary in their translations, the LXX expressing it by γέλως, the Vulgate by exemplum.

Psa. 7:13, “He ordaineth His arrows against the persecutors,” txp`,,-. Better “He maketh his arrows burning ones,” i.e., to consume His enemies. See Fuerst's Lexicon.

Psa. 56:2, “O Thou most high,” oil?. So the Chaldee and Aquila. But it is best to take the word here as an adverb, “haughtily,” “insolently.” See Rosenmtiller's Scholia, and Fuerst's Lexicon.

Psa. 68:6, “With chains,” ni-Vn, rather “into prosperity.” It occurs nowhere else.

Psa. 77:2, “My sore ran and ceased not.” What is the meaninub of ‘?’ translated “sore?” A better translation has been proposed, “my hand at night was stretched out, and ceases not,” i.e., he continued in prayer.

Isa. 19:10. The meaning here turns chiefly on two words -1?.in and `TR. A better translation is given by Henderson, “and her foundations e. nobles, pillars of the state) shall be broken, and all workers of hire e. laborers) are grieved in mind.” See also Fuerst on asdfasdf1

Isa. 30:7, “Their strength is to sit still,” rsfgh,414.5 ary,. Various have been the renderings of this difficult clause. Some join the pronoun cr.t. to the first word, others connect it with the following. Fuerst translates, “their violent pressing after aid ceases.” Lowth and Henderson apply the clause to Egypt, “I have called her Rahab, the inactive,” i. e., the one who sits still. Lee and Gesenius also apply it to Egypt, “Insolent in their habitations.” Rosenmiiller, Ferocia, nunc desidia; LXX, ὅτι ματαία ἡ παράκλησις ὑμῶν αὕτη; Vulgate, Superbia tantum est, quiesce. All these different translations are so many confessions of the difficulty of the passage. But none of them supports the authorized version, which, though it expresses what is true of God's people, does not express the truth in this place.

Isa. 30:32, “grounded staff,” ri77vo rrv; rather “rod of appointment,” i. e., appointed for punishment, Gesenius,.Fuerst, Henderson, Ezek. 1:24, “Voice of speech,” m`gy?7 “sound of a multitude,” Fuerst, “tumult,” Henderson, “falling rain,” Rosentnfiller. It occurs also in Jer. 11:16, translated “tumult.” The versions generally appear to have read rezprr “speech,” except the Vulgate which translates “sonus multitudinis,” which might be followed.

Dan. 7:9, “Were cast down.” 1,12:1 better, “were placed,” so LXX, Vulgate.

Hos. 6:3, “As the latter and former rain unto the earth.” y better, “as the latter rain which fructifies the earth.” Here m), must be taken as future Hiphil of r governing “earth,” and not the noun, which is elsewhere translated “former rain.” See Lee and Fuerst.

Hab. 1:9, “Their faces shall sup up as the east wind.” map only met with here, according to Lee, means “desire.” “The desire (Lee), direction (Fuerst), of their faces is eastward.” Coming on the land of Canaan, their aim is to move eastward with their spoil.

2. Passages in which the translation might be improved.

Gen. 4:8, “And Cain talked with Abel his brother.” Rather, “and Cain said to Abel his brother.” There is an evident hiatus in the sense in the Hebrew which the authorized version does not show. The Sam, with most of the versions, supplies “let us go into the field,” but without MSS. authority, except in the Samaritan codices. Gen. 41:40, “According unto thy word shall all my people be ruled.” This is too free. The original is as follows— “And on thy mouth shall all my people kiss.” Compare Psa. 2:12. Martin translates, “Et tout mon peuple te baisera.” Samuel, when he anointed Saul, kissed him (1St Samuel 10:1). Num. 12:11-13, “Alas, my lord, I beseech Thee //¿lay not.... Let her not ?; be as one dead..... Heal her now 21 0 God, I beseech Thee, t4).” The urgency of Aaron with Moses, and the importunity of Moses with God, are beautifully expressed by the repetition in each case of the particle of entreaty rc, “Alas, my lord, I beseech Thee Let her not, I beseech Thee O, God, I beseech Thee, heal her, I beseech Thee.” Martin gives expression to the particle in each case, “Helas, monseigneur, je te prie..... Jeremiah to prie qu 'elle 0,.Dieu Fort! je te prie, gueris-la je t' en prie.” Num. 16:13, “except thou,",p rather “that thou.” Noldius “quod,” LXX ὅτι; but the Vulgate agrees with the authorized version. Dathan and Abiram, in reality, bring two charges against Moses, that he designed to lead the people into the wilderness to their destruction, and that he aimed at making himself a prince over them. The English translation conveys the idea of an alternative; the Hebrew of an additional ground of complaint, because Moses had sent for them.

The historical books will furnish a few examples: Josh. 24:2, 3, 14, 15, “the flood,” -1N7 lit. “the river,” i. e., Euphrates; so also Isa. 59:19. But in Jer. 46:7, 8, “the flood” is -114! lit. “the river,” i. e., the Nile. Judg. 2:21, “Will not drive out any,” Hebrew “a man” which is more forcible. V. 13. Another translation of this verse is as follows— “Then descended part of the people among the nobles: the Lord descended for me among the mighty.” The difference of translation here turns on iri+ whether it be from the root 111, to descend, or rr to rule. The LXX connected it with the former, which yields a sense in perfect accordance with the details of the battle; for Barak descended from the mountain to the valley (iv. 14, v. 15), and the Lord went before him. The verb must be regarded as the Aramaic form of the perfect. XIII. 12, Manoah's question, as given by the authorized version (“How shall we order the child? and how shall we do to him?”) fails to convey what he really did say. “What shall be the manner (condition) of the child, and his work?” See Vulgate. A curious mistake we meet with in Ruth 3:15, 16— “And she went into the city. And when she came to her mother-in-law she said.” It should be, “And he went into the city. And she went to her mother-in-law, and she said.” So LXX and Martin. Probably the Vulgate here led the English translators astray, which translates “ingressa est civitatem et venit.” Often, as the reader must have remarked, it might have been followed with advantage; here its lead should be discarded. 2 Sam. 23:4. “As a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain.” If the order of the original is attended to, we get a good sense: “As a morning without clouds for brightness; as the young grass of the earth (nourished) by rain.” See Vulgate.

From the poetical books we select the following: -Psa. 16:3: “To the saints that are in the earth, and the nobles (i.e. excellent), in them is all my delight.” In 55:22, a little alteration would improve the passage so often quoted; “Cast thy lot,” that which God has appointed thee. In 68:4, if we read, “Cast up for him,” or “level for him,” i.e., prepare his way alb, we shall better understand what the Psalmist wrote. Compare Isa. 40:3, 4. Again, in 74:18, the Lord is reminded that the enemy has reproached Him— “hath reproached Jehovah.” So LXX. and Vulgate. Another correction should be made in 24, “Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel, and after the glory thou wilt receive rue.” Compare Zech. 2:8, for the same phrase correctly translated. This is a most important difference, and shows that the saints who will use this psalm will understand their position as sharers in the blessings on earth when the Lord reigns. Their calling is earthly, ours is heavenly. We shall be received by the Lord before the glory (1 Thess. 4), they after it has appeared. Such a verse in the Psalms shows that the hopes they express of future blessing are for others of God's saints than those who share in the heavenly calling.

Turning to the prophets, a more exact rendering helps us to understand Isa. 6:13, “Which being cut down have still the trunk,” for “whose substance is in them when they cast their leaves.” The prophet speaks of violent dealing with the nation, and compares it to a tree roughly used; the English version, on the contrary, speaks of an annual operation of nature. A little attention to Isa. 53:11, shows that the prophet speaks of two things, “He shall make righteous the many, and (not “for”) He shall bear their iniquities.” So Vulgate. At times we believe the authorized version has failed to convey the sense of the original, because the translators had not seized the great outlines of prophecy. Psa. 73:24, has been already noticed as an instance of this. Ezek. 37:26, 27 affords another. Two things are spoken of here, God's sanctuary and God's tabernacle. His sanctuary will be among them asdfsafd. His tabernacle over them m75r. See Rev. 7:15, in Greek— “will tabernacle over them.” In the following chapter we read, ver. 8, “which have been always laid waste,” -rpr,1 rather “continually.” They were once fruitful, but since God's judgment has been poured out on Israel their fertility has departed. Martin translates more correctly “continuellement.” Another instance of want of accuracy is found in Dan. 7:18, 22, 25, 27. The Chaldee has two words translated always in the authorized version by one. “Most High” t4'v which occurs only in verse 25, “He shall speak great words against the Most High.” Else. where, in verses 18, 22, 25, 27, it is not God of whom the prophet writes, but the high places, p5t The saints of the high places shall take the kingdom (ver. 18), and judgment be given to them (ver. 22). He shall wear out the saints of the high places, the heavenly saints; the heavenly saints who are subsequently martyred (ver. 25); but the people of the saints of the high places shall have the kingdom under heaven, i.e., shall share in the earthly kingdom (ver. 27). This clears up the passage greatly. The translation of Hag. 2:9 should be noticed. God owns but one house as His. It has been twice destroyed, it will be again; but in His eyes the house, however often rebuilt, is ever the same. So the Hebrew should be here translated, “the latter glory of this house,” not “the glory of this latter house. In Zech. 10:4, the prophet is speaking of those who shall proceed out of Judah in a future day. “From him shall proceed a corner or chief (So. Judg. 20:2; 1 Sam. 14:38; Isa. 19:13) from him every ruler;” for tab, elsewhere translated taskmaster, oppressor, is here used in a good sense. In Zech. 11:10, for “all the people,” read “all the peoples.” The covenant made with all the peoples—God's promise to Abraham, that in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed—was apparently broken when the Lord was rejected and died. It is this the prophet is occupied with- the effects of his rejection and death to others beside Israel. Afterward the other staff which shadowed the brotherhood between Judah and Israel was broken. The Staff called Beauty concerned all the nations. Similarly, in chap. 12:3, 4, “all the people” should be “all the peoples,” i.e., the nations arrayed against Judah and against God. One more passage remains to be noticed, chap. 14:3, instead of “Then shall the Lord go forth,” we should read, “And the Lord shall go forth,” with LXX, Vulgate, and Martin, who has “car.” The text does not fix the time, but the order of the events.

3. Passages in which words have been added, materially affecting the sense.

Ex. 34:33, affords a notable instance of this, which makes the sacred writer to have written just the opposite of what he did write, and necessitates the omission of the conjunction “and.” “And till Moses had done speaking with them he put a veil on his face.” Moses wrote, “And Moses finished speaking with them, and he put a veil on his face.” So LXX and Vulgate. Affrighted at Moses, whose face was resplendent with divine glory, the children of Israel feared to approach him; but they had all to draw near, to behold the glory, and to learn what he had to communicate. That finished, he covered his face with a veil, till he entered again the presence of God; afterward he came out and again spoke to the people with his face unveiled, but veiled it when he had done speaking to them. Thus the passage is in harmony with 2 Cor. 3, which gives the real reason of the veiling of Moses' face, “that the children of Israel could not steadfastly look to the end of that which is abolished.” They could not “steadfastly behold his face for the glory of his countenance,” and they could not, because the veil hid it, see the transient character of the glory with which it was illuminated. To be brief, one more passage is referred to—Hos. 6:3, “Then shall we know if we follow on to know the Lord.” The Hebrew expresses no condition, “And we shall know, we shall follow on to know the Lord.” So LXX. Martin renders it, “Car nous connaitrons L'Eternel, et nous continnerons le connaitre.”

4. Passages where, through a want of accuracy in the tenses, the sense is obscured.

This is oftenest the case in the prophetical portions of Scripture. Thus, in the prophetical Psa. 67:6, the Hebrew states, “the earth has yielded her increase.” The authorized translation translates “Then, shall the earth yield her increase.” A reference to Lev. 26:42, shows that God promises in the latter days to remember the land. Hence, when that takes place, the remnant, observing the returning fertility of the soil, will know their time of blessing approaches, so add, “God, our God, shall bless us.” Again, in Psa. 97:6, the verbs are in the perfect: “The heavens have declared His righteousness, and all the peoples have seen His glory.” The manifestation of the Lord having taken place, all idolaters shall be confounded.

5. Passages in which the definite article has been improperly omitted.

Judg. 2:11; 3:7; 8:33; 10:6, 10, should be rendered “the Baalim” —not one, but many male gods; and “the Asheroth,” translated “the groves,” but rather, the female divinities, in 3:7, and “the Ashtaroth,” in 10:6. The article, when expressed, brings out the enormity of their guilt—they forsook the one God to serve the many, the true God for the false ones. 1 Sam. 31:13; 22:6, a tree” should be “the tamarisk,” a well-known one. Dan. 9:27; 11:39, “the many.” Judg. 15:19, “the hollow place.” It remained after Samson had drank at it.

6. Passages in which a proper name has been translated.

Judg. 15:19, for “the jaw,” we should read, as the margin, “Lehi.” The spring was not in the jawbone, but in Lehi, so named from the instrument Samson used. So in 23:25, it should be as the margin has it in “Mahaneh Dan,” a place so named because of what happened, as recounted in 18:12. In 20:43, we read the children of Israel trod down the Benjamites “from Menuchah,” not as in authorized version “with ease.” See LXX and Martin. Zeph. 1:10, “an howling from the second rTprr rather “Mishneh,” a part of Jerusalem. See 2 Kings 22:14 Chron. 34:22, in the margin. In Ezek. 27:19, “going to and fro” should be “from Uzal,” a district of Arabia (so LXX and Aquila); but in verse 11, “Gammadim” should be translated “garrisons.” See Fuerst.

7. Passages where the punctuation should be amended.

Deut. 1:32, 33, these verses form part of the speech: “And in this matter ye are not trusting the Lord your God, who goes before you in the way,” &c. The speech ends with verse 33. In Psa. 56:4, there should be a question, “I will not fear. What can flesh do to me?” So Martin; but in 101:2, we should probably read without the note of interrogation, “I will behave myself wisely in a perfect way, when Thou wilt come to me.” So Vulgate, Lee, and Rosenmiiller. Again, in Jer. 38:15, the last clause we should read without a question, “and if I counsel thee, thou wilt not hearken to me,” so Vulgate and Martin; but LXX in both these places agrees with the authorized version.

From the instances brought forward, want of space alone necessitating a selection, it will be seen that our English version is decidedly in need of amendment. How that may best be accomplished is not the subject before us; but if we dwell for a time on its defects, we must not shut our eyes to its excellencies. It has been pronounced, and with truth, as a whole, the best of modern versions. For it we have much cause to thank God. Compared with the Douay version, made for Roman Catholics in England, how great is the difference, how immense its superiority; but if it can be improved by being made a more faithful translation of the originals, shall we refuse to see its deficiencies? Surely the translators, were they now alive, would desire nothing else than that their defects should be amended, and the word of the living God, which they sought to convey to the English reader, be as accurately rendered as possible. But if a revision be undertaken, it should be of a text based on MS. authority. It must be of the Hebrew and Chaldee, read with points; and it must proceed on the understanding that it will as faithfully as possible—the idioms of the languages being duly considered—translate the text, remembering that the business of a translator is to convey the meaning of what the author wrote, and not what he thinks he should have written. The tenses of verbs, and the numbers of nouns, should be carefully attended to. In this our translators have failed, forgetting at times that the work of a translator is to translate the text—the business of the teacher to expound it. These two offices should be kept distinct. Were this work carried out efficiently, many passages might undergo a slight change, familiar words and phrases might disappear, portions of the prophetical parts might be greatly altered, and the poetical writings emerge from the pen of the translator in places almost wholly recast. How differently, for instance, the song of Deborah would read, if translated from the Hebrew afresh, with all the light we now possess regarding the meaning of the terms the prophetess employed. But if with these changes we felt sure we had approached more closely to the meaning of the Spirit of God, we should gain and not lose. In the meantime passages may well be examined, and suggested improvements canvassed.

The Re-Translation or Revision of the Bible: No. 3

Much has of late years been done to verify, as far as possible, the text of the Greek New Testament. Whether any critical text yet published should be invariably followed as correct is a question open to doubt, or perhaps some would say, one which admits of no doubt. Perhaps the text which, from the abundant materials now gathered together, shall generally command the confidence of scholars and Bible students has yet to appear. Meanwhile, we can in some places clearly see what should be read, and what corrections of the common Greek text (whether the second Elzevir edition, published in 1633, or the third edition of Stephen, published in 1550) should now be made. That neither of these texts can be accepted as an accurate reprint of the originals, or even of what was read as such in the early ages of Christianity, we need not now stop to prove. Nor, since several attempts to revise the authorized version of the New Testament, or to translate afresh from the Greek, have of late years appeared, need we stop to inquire whether that version needs amendment. We shall, therefore, confine our remarks to pointing out some corrections of the authorized version which, in any revision, will most probably be made.

And, first, of corrections arising from changes in the Greek text.

1. Words or clauses which should be omitted.

Matt. 6:13, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever, amen;” 25:13, “wherein the Son of man cometh;” 27:35, “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots;” Acts 10:6, “he shall tell thee what thou oughtest to do” 8:37, the whole verse; 9:5, 6, “it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he trembling and astonished, said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” Rom. 1:16, “of Christ;” 6:11, “our Lord;” 8:1, “who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit;” 15:29, “of the gospel;” 16:18, “Jesus;” 1 Cor. 5:1, “so much as is named;” 6:20, “and in your spirit, which are God's;” 7:5, “fasting and;” 10:28, “for the earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof;” 11:24, “take eat;” 2 Cor. 4; 10, “the Lord;” Gal. 3:1, “that ye should not obey the truth;” Col. 1:2, “and the Lord Jesus Christ;” 14, “through His blood;” 28, “Jesus;” 2:11, “the sins of;” 2 Thess. 2:4, “as God;” 1 Tim. 1:17, “wise;” Heb. 3:1, “Christ;” 11:13, “and were persuaded of them;” 12:20, “or thrust through with a dart;” 1 John 5:7, 8, “in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth;” 13, “that believe on the name of the Son of God;” Jude 25, “wise;” Rev. 1:8, “the beginning and the ending;” 11, “I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and;” 2:20, “a few things;” 24, “and unto;” 5:14, “him that liveth forever and ever;” 11:17, “and art to come;” 14:5, “before the throne of God;” 16:14, “of the earth and;” 20:5, — “again.”

A fertile source of errors in the text has been the tendency to harmonize two independent accounts of the same thing. The Spirit of God surely had a reason for every word He saw fit to use. As the sacred writer wrote it, He intended it should appear. All that one recorded, it was not God's mind that others should record likewise. So, in Mark 2:17, “to repentance;” 3:5, “whole as the other;” 11:10, “in the name of the Lord;” 14:22, 2nd, “eat;” should be omitted, whilst in the parallel passages of Matthew or Luke the words will be found in the text unchallenged.

2. Additions which should be made.

Acts 4:27, “together in this city;” 16:7, “Spirit of Jesus;” 20:23, “witnesseth to me;” 1 Cor. 9:20, “as under the law not being really under law;” 1 Peter 2:2, “grow thereby unto salvation;” 2 Peter 3:3, “scoffers in their scoffing;” 1 John 2:23, “Father but he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also;” Jude 25, “Savior by Jesus Christ our Lord;” Rev. 8:7, “earth and the third part of the earth was burnt up;” 14:1, “having His name and.”

3. Alterations which should be made.

Matt. 9:36, “were harassed,” for, “fainted;” 18:28, “pay if thou owest anything,” for, “pay me that thou owest;” Luke 2:22, “their purification,” for, “her purification;” 3:2, “high priest,” for, “high priests;” John 3:25, “a Jew,” for, “the Jews;” 17:11, “keep them in thine name, which,” for, “keep through thine own name those whom;” Acts 3:20, “before was appointed you,” for, “before was preached unto you;” 6:8, “grace,” for, “faith;” 9:6, “but,” for, “and the Lord said unto him;” 14:3, “by granting,” for, “and granted;” 14, “rushed forth,” for, “ran in;” 17, “you,” for, “us;” Rom. 2:17, “but if,” for, “behold;” 7:6, “having died in that,” for, “that being dead;” 1 Cor. 1:23, “heathen,” for, “Greeks;” Gal. 4:26, “our mother,” for, “mother of us all;” Eph. 1:18, “heart,” for, “understanding;” 3:9, “dispensation,” for, “fellowship;” 5:9, “light,” for, “Spirit;” 21, “Christ,” for, “God;” 29, “Christ,” for, “Lord;” Colos. 3:22, “the Lord,” for, “God;” 2 Thess. 2:2, “the Lord,” for, “Christ;” 1 Tim. 6:19, “that which is really,” for, “eternal;” 2 Tim. 2:19, “of the Lord,” for, “of Christ;” Heb. 8:11, “fellow citizen,” for, “neighbor;” James 5:9, “judged,” for, “condemned;” 2 Peter 2:18, “in some degree,” for, “clean;” 1 John 5:13, “who,” for, “and that ye may;” 2 John 1, 7, “gone out,” for, “entered;” Jude 12, “carried away,” for, “carried about;” Rev. 1:5, “loveth,” for, “loved;” 2:15, “in like manner,” for, “which thing I hate;” 8:13, “eagle,” for, “angel;” 11:4, “Lord,” for, “God;” 15, “the kingdom is,” for, “the kingdoms are;” 15:3, “nations,” for, “saints;” 17:8, “and shall be present,” for, “and yet is;” 18:20, “saints and apostles,” for, “holy apostles;” 20:12, “the throne,” for, “God;” 21:7, “these things,” for, “all things;” 22:6, “spirits of the,” for, “holy;” 19, “from the tree,” for, “out of the book;” 14, “wash their robes,” for, “do His commandments.”

Attention to these and other alterations which might be noticed will often throw great light on Scripture, and will correct the thoughts of God's children. For example, in the alteration of “Christ” for “the Lord” in Eph. 5:29, we learn that “Lord” is not a correct term to use when speaking of Christ and the Church. The propriety of the changes in Eph. 5:21, Col. 3:22, 2 Tim. 2:19, will be apparent. Set on high as Lord and Christ all are to own not only God, but Him who is Lord.

Besides these changes in the text, others must be made in the translation.

In some cases the definite article has great force, and should be inserted.

John 6:32, the bread from heaven; 16:13, all the truth; 1 Cor. 10:5, with the most of them; 12:12, the Christ, because speaking of the Head and the members together; 2 Thes. 2:8, the wicked (or rather, the lawless one); 2 Tim. 4:7, the good fight; Rev. 7:14, the great tribulation.

The translation should be amended.

Acts 7:59, “praying and saying,” for, “calling upon God, and saying,” so Syriac, Vulgate, Martin, Tynedale; Rom. 11:31, “have not believed in your mercy, that they,” for, “have not believed, that through your mercy they;” 1 Cor. 9:21, “in lawful subjection,” for, “under the law;” 1 Cor. 15:2, “hold fast,” for, “keep in memory;” 2 Cor. 3:7, “began with glory,” for, “was glorious;” 8, “subsist in glory,” for, “glorious;” 11, “was with glory,” for “was glorious;” “subsists in glory,” for, “is glorious;” 18, “unveiled,” for, “open;” 4:3, “veiled,” “it is veiled,” for, “hid,” “it is hid;” Gal. 5:17, “in order that ye should not,” for “so that ye cannot;” Eph. 3:15, “every family,” for, “the whole family;” 18; “may be thoroughly able,” for, “may be able;” 6:4, “discipline,” for, “nurture;” Philip. 4:5, “gentleness,” for, “moderation;” Col. 3:10, “unto full knowledge,” for, “in knowledge;” 2 Thess. 2:2, “is present,” for, “is at hand;” 3:5, “patience of the Christ,” for, “patient waiting for Christ;” Titus 2:13, “our great God and Savior,” for, “the great God and our Savior;” Heb. 4:14, “passed through,” for, “passed into;” 10:23, “hope,” for, “faith;” 12:2, “leader and perfecter of the faith,” for, “author and finisher of our faith;” 1 John 2:19, “all are not of us,” for, “they are not all of us;” 3:4, “practices lawlessness,” “lawlessness,” for, “transgresseth the law;” “transgression of the law;” Rev. 7:15, “shall tabernacle over them,” for, “shall dwell among them.” The needless insertion of some words, and the omission of others should be attended to.

Matt. 20:23, read, “is not mine to give, but to those for whom it is prepared of my Father;” 25:14, read, “for it is as if a man, going from home, called his servants;” 1 Cor. 14., read, “tongue,” simply; John 8:1, read, “and Jesus went,” so Tynedale and Geneva; 2 Cor. 5:6, read, “and know that,” so Tynedale, Cranmer, Geneva.

More care should be exercised in the translation of words.

The distinction between υἰὸς (wios), a son, manifested as such to others, and τέκνον (tecnon), a child, expressive of relationship, should be carefully preserved. The Lord Jesus is called υἰὸς, never τέκνον, except in Luke 2:48 (when addressed by His mother), and Rev. 12:4. Of believers both terms are used, but only in the writings of Paul, Matt. 5:9, 45; Luke 6:35; 16:8; 20:36; John 12:36; Rev. 21:7, excepted. John generally speaks of relationship to God, a child, so uses τέκνον. Paul speaks of this, and of the position before the world as a son as well, so uses the word υἰὸς likewise. (See Rom. 8:14, 16.) To the Lord as an infant, παιδίον (paidion), a little child, is applied (Matt. 2; Luke 2:17, 40); and when twelve years of age he is called ποίμνη (pais), a child, the same ward used Him after his resurrection, in Acts 3:13, 26; 4:27, 30. Paul is the first in Acts who proclaims Him as Son (υἰὸς, 9:20) of God. Between the fold ἀνλή (John 10:1, 16) and ποίμνη (10:16) there is a wide difference, which should be noted. God owns now no fold; the sheep formerly in it have been led out of it; but He has a flock. Hell, ἄδης (hades), the place of departed spirits, and hell, γέεννα (gehenna), the place of torment, which occurs only in Matt. 5:22, 29, 30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15, 33; Mark 9:43, 45, 47; Luke 12:5; James 3:6; are not the same place; yet the authorized version fails to point this out. Again, should not the reader be informed that comforter (John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7) is the same word in the Greek as advocate (1 John 2:1), παράκλητος (paracletos), showing that whilst the advocacy of the Lord is carried on high, there is another advocate, the Holy Ghost, on earth! Again, why should ἐπίσκοπος (episcopos) be translated bishop in 1 Tim. 3:2, and overseer in Acts 20:28?

Examples might be multiplied, but our business is not to translate, but to show the need of a careful revision, both of the text and of the authorized version. When undertaken, if faithfully executed, will it not be the most convincing proof that those whose religion is professedly drawn from the Bible, and by which word, and that alone, they profess to be guided, are above all party considerations, desiring for themselves and others God's word in its purity and its simplicity C. E. S.

The Red Sea and the Jordan

The epistle to the Romans (5:12-8) supposes us to be in the wilderness. We have been saved in hope, and meanwhile we groan. The creature is under the bondage of corruption, only nothing will separate us from the love of God. In the epistle to the Ephesians we are as clearly in Canaan. This helps to make the matter plain.

In the Red Sea setting forth the death and resurrection of Christ, redemption by it is plain as a basis. We have really died in Him and gone out of Egypt. We are not in the flesh. We were baptized unto His death. We reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God. We have our place thus; and it is deliverance. We know that the old man is crucified with Christ, and so are justified from sin (not sins); but it is never here raised together. When this is used, we are looked at as dead in sins (not as having died to sin), and Christ as being dead by reason of this in grace; and so the purpose and power of God comes in, and we are raised with and seated in Him in heavenly places. On passing the Jordan, we are risen and entered into heavenly places. Then Gilgal comes and conflict in Canaan.

Peter shows us redemption through the precious blood of Christ. And we are begotten again to a lively hope through the resurrection of Christ. Here it is simple, not death with Him.

In Rom. 6 it is “planted together in the likeness of his death,” and knowing this that our old man is crucified with Him: so that we reckon ourselves dead to sin, and we say (ch. 7), “when we were in the flesh.” Yet even this is comparatively vague, and reasoned out to be proved as a result: “in Christ” only occurs as an assumed fact in ch. 8:1, and only to have “no condemnation,” delivered from the law of sin and death. Then we are in the Spirit, not in the flesh. Christ is in us: if so, the body is dead and the Spirit life. It is an argued out result for one who is in the wilderness. Hence Christ lives to make intercession for us. It is dealing with man in flesh, delivered, no doubt, but showing him that he is.

In Ephesians it is God's work as to one dead, and must take the form He gives it (i.e., heavenly places in Christ); whereas we have a condition and state in the epistle to the Romans—life in Christ but life in the wilderness. There is no condemnation, but then the whole practical demonstration is proof by state—known by faith but state. I was living in sinful flesh; I have been planted in Christ's death; and as a dead man cannot have sin, I am justified from it. The apostle is not speaking of sins here, which we had before, but of sin. We are alive now, married to another. There is therefore no condemnation for those in Christ; but the thing must be proved, because I had been in that evil state. But in Ephesians I am in the place God put me into by a new creation, according to His purpose, which is Canaan.

Death was judgment in the Read Sea: only Christ underwent it, and so sin in the flesh was condemned. The Egyptians were destroyed and the bond broken, and hence deliverance and redemption. But in Jordan it is non-existence.

I do arrive at reckoning myself dead in Romans, that sin may not have dominion over me; for I am not under law but under grace. But it is reached by faith, sin being de facto known to be there to the last verse of ch. 7. But in Ephesians it is simply a new creation. I am in heavenly places where sin does not come: even my conflict as belonging to God is with Satan. In Jordan I have ceased to exist for the wilderness. It is not thus in Romans: only Christ is my life for the wilderness. In Ephesians we are not crucified with Christ: it begins with bringing out of death. That is, in Romans the old man is contemplated as alive and having to die—only as dead by Christ, who really died. We are not quickened together with Christ in the Read Sea. Baptized unto Christ, we may be said to enter in to His death, and so reckon ourselves dead, rising through Him.

But raised with Him is another thing. Then I do not get deliverance from my state and condition, but, according to the value of Christ's work and the place He enters into in His person, the purpose of God about us; we are introduced into a new place, Christ's place as gone into the presence of God; we are identified with Him—not merely live through Him. Hence in Romans we have experience, though a blessed one; in Ephesians we have not, save as a consequence—we are in heavenly places, instead of having experience of ourselves as in Romans.

The point at the Red Sea was what they got out of, though really brought to God for faith; the point in Jordan was what they got into (answering to Romans and Ephesians). At the Red Sea Canaan was hope; at Jordan they are entered in. So, in fact, we shall be raised in glory—going to heaven is a kind of necessary consequence. But we are raised up together with Christ and seated together in heavenly places in Him. I am dead to sin in Romans; I was dead in sins in Ephesians. I am clean taken out of the whole condition. The blood on the doorposts met the judgment of God against sins, besides being the foundation of all. At the Red Sea we get out of Egypt. We are baptized unto Christ's death. It is redemption. At Jordan we are in heavenly places.

There is another point to be remarked. Israel came up to the Red Sea, trembling, pressed by Pharoah, the prince of the world, shut in with death and judgment or destruction before them. God acts for them, and death and judgment are turned into deliverance, because Christ undergoes death and judgment, so securing us and letting us get out free on the other side.

At Jordan Israel are not thus contemplated. They do descend into Jordan, no doubt; but all is contemplated according to the power of God in Him. It is not assuredly their strength: Christ had to go first.

Man as man, even as a believer, had not passed this way heretofore. It was a divine person, the Lord, who had been in the midst of them and must go first. The feet of the priests who bore the ark touched the water. It was not the rod of God lifted over the sea. At Jordan it is as John's gospel—the Lord giving them a part with Him, preparing them a place that they may be with Him, not He with them in the wilderness, departing out of this world unto the Father—not as in Matthew, forsaken of God on the cross. He leads, goes on alone with a space between, destroys him that had the power of death, and delivers. That path into the heavenlies is open till all the people have passed over. It is the Lord going first; but the Lord is with, amongst, and at the head of, His people. It bears the heavenly character; it is a work which refers to Canaan, not to Egypt. Hence, when Israel is through, the Red Sea takes all its terror and power again, and the Egyptians are destroyed; whereas at Jordan a memorial is preserved, twelve stones are set up in the river, and twelve stones taken out of it. It is a blessed memorial of having done with the world. Death is gain, not judgment—death undoubtedly, but death to what?

And if we look at the matter as Christ's death, it was obedience unto death, love unto the end, His closing the scene of sorrow and the world, not simply drinking the cup of wrath. It is every way gain. Hence, too, here resurrection is no distinct state: pass Jordan, and we are in heaven. So we find in John always. Thus Mary Magdalene must not touch Him. He was going to His Father and ours. Yet John otherwise is all manifestation on earth; but when death comes in, it is going to heaven.

Repentance Unto Life, What Is It? Review

1. Repentance unto life, what is it? The substance of a Lecture on Rom. 2:4. London: G. Morrish, 24 Warwick Lane.

Every one who takes an interest in the work of evangelization and the difficulties of souls, must have noticed how often “repentance” proves a barrier which arrests and troubles the conscientious enquirer; how often it acts in checking confidence in God and His grace; how often it turns the eye from Christ to an examination of self, with all the doubts, questions, fears, which naturally follow. Now, nothing can be farther from the intention of the Lord. Such effects are due solely to an unscriptural view of what repentance means. At the same time it becomes those who know the grace of God in truth not to enfeeble the need and value of that self-judgment before God of the old man and its deeds by the new. This is sometimes the danger, especially in statement.

A Scriptural Inquiry into the true nature of the Sabbath, the Law, and the Christian ministry. (Belfast: A. Mayne. 1857.)

This is a plain, straightforward, and useful exposition of the truth of God as to these momentous yet much disputed topics. The law is but cursorily treated. It is a large subject, and the author contents himself with stating the principle, and referring to the numerous scriptures which develop it. The distinctive character and divine claims of the Lord's day and of Christian ministry are opened out, so as to silence cavilers and satisfy upright minds.

On the Return of the Lord Jesus Christ From Heaven to Meet His Saints in the Air: No. 1

“The important thing is having Jesus in the glory as our hope; a very subordinate thing, the question when shall we be in the glory with Him. If any one's teaching made the saints value Jesus as their hope less, it would be sufficient to show their teaching to be faulty. But if it be only to the effect of making them think the time, when they shall be in the glory, farther off than they supposed, I have nothing to say. Those who have such a hope ought to be able to wait.”

Fully do I consent to these words of a brother much loved in the Lord; and though I may go a little into details on the subject, nothing I trust may at all arise to contend with this judgment. But some have judged that inquiry into these details has been evaded, or at least that the word of God concerning them has been treated carelessly; and confidence upon this ground ought not to be lightly shaken For though it may be true that, in the progress of our thoughts upon them, haste has been betrayed, and conclusions have either been assumed unguardedly, asserted too strongly, or adopted merely from the teaching of others, yet the sole and supreme authority of scripture has been, at least intentionally, upheld; and not a jot or tittle of it treated with a willfully careless mind. This, indeed, we would say, and seek for happy common confidence herein. But let me add, what I believe is very important also, that while scripture alone is to form all our thoughts, it is also to give to our minds the relative place and proportion of the different branches, if I may so speak, of divine knowledge. As to the knowledge, then, of prophetical truth, it is like every other branch to have only its due measure of importance given to it.

And upon this I would observe, that when in the course of his teaching Paul comes to touch upon it, he merely says, “I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant,” (Rom. 11)—a style, surely, which he would not and could not have used, had he been about to propound some of the essential parts of gospel or saving truth. But not only is its proportionate value to be thus considered, but also seasonableness in the pursuit of this knowledge. The intercourse of the Lord with Nicodemus shows us this; for the Lord would not meet his inquiry or desire after heavenly mysteries, till the state of his own soul was called into question and settled. Paul's treatment of the Corinthians intimates the same; for he would not find them, carnal and walking as men as they were, with that hidden wisdom which was seasonable only for the perfect, (1 Cor. 2, 3).

And again, I observe that there is to be a measure in our expectations about this knowledge. For it is told us that our present knowledge compared with what it shall be, is that of mere childhood, that we know only in part, and see as through a glass darkly. (1 Cor. 13) And Peter intimates the same. For while he speaks of the prophetic word as a light or a lamp, he gives us to know that the lamp does not shed the morning, for the day-dawn is to spring in another season. (2 Peter 1) And it is morally important to remember, that our expectations are to be thus measured, for it will help us to a lowly mind, and rebuke a spirit of authority and self-complacency.

But then, I fully grant the value of prophetic knowledge. It has been again and again used to verify the claims of Jesus, and affirm our holy faith. It is of use to nourish right affections, and a godly mind It feeds our hopes. It secures us (under the Holy Ghost) against the working of Satan and his deceits; it prepares us for the opening circumstances of the world, so that we may not be surprised by them; and it teaches us something of our dignity as saints, by letting us see, how the Lord entrusts us with His secrets, and brings us into greater nearness to Himself.

These are among the blessings to our souls which attach to this knowledge. And if I hint at the measure of importance to be given to it, the expectations to be indulged respecting it, or that there is to be a season for pursuing it, I am not daring for a moment to discourage it: that would be the enemy's work. It was the communicator of prophetic light, whom “the prince of the kingdom of Persia” would have kept from Daniel. (chapter. 10)

And let me say, that a habit of thoughtful reading of every passage, I would also cultivate.

But there may be error on the one side, as well as on the other. If the imaginative tendency of some minds is to be watched, so has the literal or exact method of others. It was an error of too much exactness in interpretation to say, “how can this man give us his flesh to eat;” because Jesus had been speaking of eating His flesh and drinking His blood. It was an error of too much liberty in interpretation to say, “that disciple should not die;” because Jesus had said, “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?” This is so, I believe, but I pass it, desiring now, in the first place, to notice the principal scriptures, on the authority of which it is judged by many, that we should give up the hope that the Lord may return from heaven to meet the saints in the air at any time, or the thought that the moment of that return is not made necessarily dependent on events not yet transpired: and then, secondly, though briefly, to notice the grounds on which that thought rests. May we all be conscious, in handling the precious things of God, that we have no credit of our own to sustain, and no opinions of our own to promote. May we tremble at His word, as well as rejoice in it, surrender our minds to it through the Spirit, and seek the profit and joy of all the saints. And may the Spirit who dwells in us, keep our hearts in holy charity and like-mindedness continually, Psa. 110:1. It has been said that this passage forbids the thought, that the Lord Jesus can leave His present seat in heaven, till all the earth is put in readiness for His treading down His enemies, and executing vengeance on the matured wickedness or lawlessness of the world.

If this be just interpretation, surely I must grant that this scripture witnesses against the thought, that nothing now hinders the Lord's return from heaven to meet the saints in the air. But we must patiently consider it, and in doing so, I think I have the warrant of scripture itself for more than questioning this. And here let me say, or rather remember what all of us would readily admit, that scripture must always be read in the light of scripture. In other words we must act on this principle, “it is written again.” The Lord Jesus, when tempted, did not answer the tempter by telling him that he had not quoted scripture exactly, but by saying that there were other scriptures to be listened to also. The latter light must be consulted. (See 1 Cor. 5:9, 10.) As to this very distinguished verse in Psa. 110, the inquiry is—does this language hinder the Lord leaving the seat He then took, till the moment of His exercising the power here pledged to Him? It teaches us, that His next action in the earth shall be that of taking vengeance; but does it teach us that He is to do nothing in heaven till then, but sit on the right hand of God? I believe not, on two reasons drawn from the light of other words of God.

The word of the Holy Ghost is commenting on this, is τὸ λοιπόν “from henceforth,” and not “ἐκει” “there” (Heb. 10:12, 13). That is, we are told that all along the time till the promise be made good, He would be expecting; but we are not told that He would be seated in His then place while thus expecting.

In entire accordance with this suggestion, which we get from this passage, we find that His sitting has been interrupted, for Stephen saw Him standing, (Acts 7) and John saw Him walking among the candlesticks in Asia, taking a book, descending to set His foot on sea and land, and then standing on Mount Zion with 144,000. (Rev. 1; 5:10; 14) This is all consistent. And if He come to meet His saints in the air, there will be no more violence done Psa. 110:1, than when He filled those actions which Stephen and John witnessed. So that rightly to interpret that inspired verse, (Psa. 110:1) I get two inspired commentaries. I get Heb. 10:13, which leads me to know that His present expectation is not linked with His sitting, but simply with the interval from the time of the promise to its accomplishment: and I get such passages as Acts 7:56, which lead me to see that His sitting has been interrupted.

All this is very simple, as I judge; but the passage is so full of meaning and value to our souls, that it invites and will excuse a further meditation.

The death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ, are spoken of under two very distinct characters, or looked at in two different lights.

The death is treated of as that of the Lamb of God for us sinners, inflicted by the righteous gracious hand of God Himself, accomplishing the remission of our sins. The resurrection is treated of as flowing from such a death, and furthering the ends of blessing to us; and so is the ascension. (See Rom. 4:25; 8:34; Heb. 8:1.)

The death is also considered as having been endured at the hand of man his wickedness and unmixed enmity to God. In such character, the Lord continually anticipates His death, and speaks of it in the gospel. (See Matt. 16; 17:20; Mark 8; 9:10; Luke 9; 18) His resurrection is also spoken of in each of those passages, and is anticipated no doubt in harmony with this character of His death, and, therefore, not as resurrection for our blessing as sinners, but for His vindication as wronged and rejected by man. (See also Acts 17:31.) And so also as to His ascension. As the death was at the hand of wicked men, and as the resurrection was a vindication of Jesus, so the ascension was the exaltation of Jesus in order to capacitate Him, so to speak, to execute the judgment upon wicked man. The figure of the stone made the head of the corner in heaven, for the purpose of falling and grinding the enemy to powder, sets forth this truth. (See Matt. 21)

Now Psa. 110:1 is the same. It is Jehovah welcoming Christ, after His Rejection here, to heaven, promising Him rest in that bright and holy place, that place of all honor and power, till the due season come for His putting His enemies as the footstool for His feet. And on the ground of this solemn truth, Peter warns the whole house of Israel to take care how they still reject Jesus (Acts 2:36); as Jesus afterward warns Saul of Tarsus (Acts 9:5.) The ascension of the Lord is thus noticed in Psa. 110:1. Jehovah undertakes to maintain Jesus in the place of honor and power, till the day of public vindication and vengeance come. This is the view of the great fact of the ascension given there. It is not looked at as for the saints, but as against the world. It is Jesus, exalted in defiance of man, and not in behalf of sinners. And it does not hinder His acting for His people, or His sympathy with them. That word could suffer no wrong—His present vindication, in defiance of His enemies, will suffer no abatement, by Jesus rising from His seat at the right hand of God, either at the martyrdom of Stephen, or His coming down to meet Saul on the road to Damascus, or to meet His ascending saints in the air, or being present at the celebration of His own marriage supper; though such acts might take place before His enemies be made His footstool. His washing His disciples' feet, and preparing mansions for them in the Father's house, even now, are not at variance with His constant session at the right hand of God in the real divine sense of Psa. 110:1. Heb. 10:13, shows us the affection with which the Lord Jesus seated Himself in this appointed place of honor and power, or (to speak of the manner of men) how He understood the words of Jehovah in Psa. 110:1. He heard them as a promise of vengeance upon His enemies, and expected accordingly. He did not know the time, but He did the truth of the promise; and He therefore expected, and would expect: be the time long or short, He was kept by it in prospect of the day of vengeance. This, I must say, forbids our impressing such a sense on the word “until.” In every day's intercourse with one another, we use this word “until” as meaning “in prospect of” —a sense, which it is manifest the Spirit simply puts on it in 1 Tim. 6:14, and several kindred passages; where Paul did not intend to say Timothy was to continue in his ministry, up to the very moment of the Lord's return in glory, but was merely urging him to a faithful discharge of that ministry in prospect of such return, come when it may. He was speaking morally and not prophetically—to the conscience, and not to the mere intelligence of Timothy. He was stirring up his diligence, and not instructing him in the circumstances of the second glorious advent of Jesus. But I pass from this.

Rom. 11:25. The next scripture to which I will refer, is suggested by the preceding, because it depends on the value of the same word “until.” (ἄχρι)

This passage, strictly read, only tells us that the Lord will not deal with “the blindness of Israel,” till He has ended His work with “the fullness of the Gentiles.” It does not determine that He is to enter on the second of these actions, immediately on His closing the first. But even if that be implied, it does not interfere with any previous thoughts we may have had; because, as I have been just reminded by another, all of us own that the Spirit will begin to move the hearts of the remnant in Israel, when the moment thus marked off arrives. So far, all is consistent, and our thoughts and judgments quite in common. But on the authority of this verse, it has been asked, can we conceive that Israel will incur their time of thickest darkness (as they will when they consent to the pretensions of the willful king,) at a period subsequent to the taking of the saints out of the world; and therefore subsequent to the coming in of the fullness of the Gentiles: while this verse so clearly intimates that their darkness or blindness lasts only up to the time of the coming in of the fullness of the Gentiles.

This scripture is surely most worthy of being strongly pressed on our attention, on such a subject as the present. But I must still inquire from the whole book of God, whether the conclusion drawn from it is sanctioned by the great standard and test of all conclusions. Now I find in Gal. 3 this language, “the law was added because of transgressions, till” (ἄχπι) &c. We all glory in knowing that our blessed Lord is the Seed here anticipated; and when I remember that, and then bethink me what His life was, I find that after the Seed did come, the law both exacted and received its fullest, nay, its only answer; and by that Seed was magnified and made honorable. The very Seed Himself, when He came, said, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law and the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” And the law was discharged only by the death of the Seed. (Rom. 7:4; Eph. 2:15; Col. 2:14). And if the law only received its highest honor and fullest vindication, after that Seed had come, there is divine or scriptural analogy to warrant our saying that the blindness of Israel may be the thickest after the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. The error is altogether in our own minds. I need not say that, save for the joy of justifying the oracles of God; for wisdom is justified of her children. The scripture needs no apology nor defense from us, but the error is in our own minds. We have not the divine method. We are accurate after a human model merely. And I am sure that in Rom. 11:25, the Holy Ghost was only marking out large dispensational truths; taking the great landmarks, by the hand of the apostle, in the vast scenery which lay before him, and leaving it, if I may so speak, to be surveyed more particularly by others, if the Lord of the country should so please it. For such had been the divine method from the beginning. The words of the prophets must open to let in the further revelations which we get through the apostles. I need not instance this; it is known too well among us. A paper, entitled “Things New and Old,” in the “Christian Witness,” gives full illustration of this. And I am sure that it is so in these passages from Gal. 3 and Rom. 11. Am I offended by finding that the law was making its fullest claims and receiving its highest honors, after the period to which Gal. 3:19 refers? Not at all. I only learn by this, that the apostle is speaking of grand dispensational truths, and not of exact moments of time; and I admire the divine method suggested by all this. I can delight in the extensive view, which the more distant position up to which the Spirit led me affords, as I can delight in the more minute and varied undulations, which a nearer sight gives me to discover. “Thou son of man, show the house to the house of Israel, and if they be ashamed of all that they have done, show them the form of the house.” The second discovery was more minute than the first. And this is the constant way. And we are not to say, that because the Lord is graciously telling us of grand dispensational matters (as He does in Gal. 3 and Rom. 11), that therefore the whole secret is exhausted. The house was shown, but within the house there was a form and a fashion, and ordinances, and laws, and goings out, and comings in, which the more distant and earlier sight of the building itself had not discovered, but which, in due season, were all to be exhibited. (See Ezek. 42)

(To be continued)

On the Return of the Lord Jesus Christ From Heaven to Meet His Saints in the Air: No. 3

A scripture of extensive signification this surely is, involving truth also of serious character, and, as we all know, suggesting matter about which there is large diversity of judgment. These considerations may lead us to meditate on it with great interest, with recollected and serious minds, and in a modest forbearing spirit. We should greatly desire the grace of unprejudiced thoughts, that we may come to learn what it teaches, and not to read it in the mere light of any previous conclusion of our own.

In a night vision the prophet sees the four winds beating upon the great sea, and out of the agitated waters rising successively four great beasts, the last of which had ten horns, in the midst of which came up another, little in comparative size, but in action more terrible than all, destroying three of them, and having in it the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking very boastfully.

After thus looking along the whole line of these earthly powers, the prophet is given another vision. He sees certain thrones set, and the Ancient of days taking His seat for judgment with His myriads of attendants, and books opened before Him; and in the progress of judgment he sees the fourth beast slain, because of the boastings of the little horn. And he sees the Son of man come up to the Ancient of days and receive from Him the glory and power of an everlasting kingdom.

Such was this night-vision in its two parts, its earthly and heavenly. Daniel was troubled at it, and craves instruction about it. And he is, in a general way, told that the four beasts represent four kingdoms that were successively to arise in the course of the world's history, but that after their dominion the saints should take an enduring kingdom.

How large, how awful, how blessed is the scene which here lies before us! How engaged should our hearts be when we look at each part of it! In extent it ranges over the history of the earth, from the fall of Jerusalem under the Chaldean to the exaltation of Jerusalem under the Messiah. In awfulness it tells us of the lengthened domination of certain powers, which in all divine reckoning were as rabid and as heady as wild beasts. In the blessedness it assures us that the good and great God, the Lord of all, will close the scene in the glory and joy of all His saints.

Daniel's heart was not unmoved by what he saw. His affections were stirred, and so should ours, or we read and acquaint ourselves with these things very undivinely. The apostle seems to stand somewhat in the presence of all this truth as well, though not so formally, as the prophet, and in like manner encourages our souls to the due affections, saying, after he had contemplated the departure of all beside, as the prophet does here of one kingdom after another, “We receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, (as the prophet had been told of the saints' kingdom,) let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear; for our God is a consuming fire.” The assurance of our immovable kingdom should plant our souls, according to this commentary of the apostle, in the joy and worship which such grace may well inspire, while the sight of such consumption of all besides may mingle that joy with other suited sentiments of heart. But these reflections I have followed rather by the way.

The prophet, it appears, was not satisfied with this general interpretation, and makes special inquiry after the fourth beast and his ten horns, and the distinguished little or eleventh horn which, as he saw, made war with the saints, till the Ancient of days came, and the kingdom was given to the saints. And the interpretation, accordingly, goes into this special matter, telling him that the fourth beast was the fourth kingdom, that the ten horns were ten kings that should arise, and that the little or eleventh horn was another king that should rise afterward, the mightiest of all, but whose kingdom should last only a time, times, and the dividing of time; for that then the judgment of God should close it, and the whole power under the heavens be transferred to the saints of the most high.

The vision thus interpreted is made plain in all its great features, and the general history of the world, within the given time and territory, is communicated to us. Some incidental inquiries will of course arise. And I judge that, in pursuing them, we are most chiefly bound to consult scriptures kindred with this. And of such, in the most eminent degree, is the Revelation by John.

I believe, then, that that book is much to be used in considering this chapter. And my present judgment is this, that the course of that book will be found concurrent with that of this chapter, where this chapter takes up the act of judgment, or the act from heaven upon earth. Thus,

Dan. 7; 9. Rev. 4

10 5

11 13, 14

12. is parenthetic.

13, 14. Rev. 20

I place these passages as having correspondence in general import, though details are far more opened and incidental matter is introduced in the Revelation.

The Revelation is the ulterior writing of the Spirit, and we might, therefore, count upon its being more full, and admit it to be our simple and natural way to read the previous writing in its light. Nothing in the ulterior word can be allowed to gainsay a single jot of the earlier, but it may enlarge upon it, and be used as a light by which, as I have said, we shall surely read it. Now this chapter in Daniel tells us nothing of “saints of the Most High” till the times of the little horn. The book of Revelation confirms the fact that there will be such saints in those times, but adds the further truth that there have been the same before (as we know all the New Testament scriptures do,) and we ourselves are the witnesses of it, being saints of the Most High, or heavenly people, ourselves.

This is very plain. These scriptures do not interfere with each other, but the latter goes into larger matter than the former. And it does more. It affords a light in which to read this chapter; and accordingly, I read verse 9 in the light of Rev. 4 and I gather the fact that, ere this judgment sits, (at least I so read it) there have been conveyed to heaven a company of saints: for I see them already there as twenty-four elders. The thrones are set in Dan. 7:9; but they are occupied as well as set in Rev. 4

Were there a single word in Daniel to deny the previous existence of such, were there a single word in his prophecy to forbid the thought that any heavenly saints could have been taken to heaven before the times of the horn, then indeed we must renounce our conclusion. But none such do I find; for I do not believe Daniel once in this chapter tells us that the judgment sits in heaven in consequence of the boasting and blasphemy, of this little horn. I grant that, in consequence of such blasphemy, the Judge causes the fourth beast to be slain, and also the dominion of the little horn itself to be consumed and destroyed. But that, I believe, is all we learn from either verse 11 or26. The prophet does not make the sitting in judgment to depend on the words of the horn. Had he done so, of course we must have read the book of Revelation under the control of such a word from him; but not having done so, I see that Daniel's testimony is quite consistent with that of John, who shows us the judgment sitting in chap. 4 and doing many things before even the horn appears in the scene, which is not until chap. 13.

Nothing, therefore, is disturbed or annulled—surely not. That could not be. The only thing is, we are to let every word of God instruct us, and if an ulterior scripture bring out larger materials, we must let them in to take their place, not with a disturbing and rude violence, but for the filling out of the revealed purpose of God.

(To be continued.)

On the Return of the Lord Jesus Christ From Heaven to Meet His Saints in the Air: No. 4

1 Cor. 15:23. On the authority of this verse, some have concluded that the Lord will not come till all who are His, and are children of resurrection, are brought to know Him, and are ready to rise together to meet Him in the air at one and the same moment. I admit the apparent force of this. But I believe it is but apparent, and will not abide the light of the whole scripture. Because, if we have nothing further, we have the ascension of the two witnesses, after the quickening of their dead bodies in Rev. 11—ground, may I not say, for denying that this verse includes all that are Christ's. This would be enough for checking confidence in the unimpregnableness of this conclusion. But I believe, further, that the Apocalypse teaches us that there will be other saints taken up at other times than that contemplated in this passage. For instance, in chap. 41 There appears to be a remnant who are heavenly in their destiny, after the man-child has been caught up; and there are companies seen at times, through the action of that wondrous book, apart from the living creatures and crowned elders, and yet in heaven—such as the slain ones on the sea of glass in chap. 15 as, at the close, distinction is still preserved in chap. 20:4. And, again, I observe, this is not disturbing scripture. It leaves previous revelations untouched. It does in nowise break 1 Cor. 15:23. But it again shows us that, in His perfect method, the Lord so orders and fashions His word under His various “ready writers,” if I may so call them, as to provide that the earlier light should let in, not the rebuking or disturbing, but harmonizing light of His further revelations.

And to help our apprehensions of the heavenly position of Israel joining “the fullness of the Gentiles,” now gathering in the heavens, I might remember such ones as Hobab and Rahab. Canaan had been espied by the Lord as the portion of the twelve tribes. But at least these two strangers sit down in that inheritance with them. This, however, was no disturbance. It involved no infraction of the family settlement. It was not a new thing, or an after-thought, with God. Our exactness may be offended, but God's provisions were quite ready for those things. But I by no means speak of this as a type, but only as a little helping of our thoughts.

Rev. 16:15. This verse has been read as marking the moment of taking the saints into the air. I would therefore consider it a little, desiring ever to do so in fear and yet delight before Him. There is a promise that the day of the Lord shall not overtake the saints as a thief in the night. (1 Thess. 5) A question may arise, in what way will this scripture be fulfilled? for, like every other, it cannot be broken. There are two ways in which the goodman and his household might be secured from a nightly thief. They might be either removed previously from the house, or kept from their guard in it. Both of these ways will, I believe, in the varied and perfect doings of the Lord, get their illustrations. For when His day comes, and in the majesty and power of judgment He touches this rebel earth again, He will find His elect Israel ready. “Blessed is he that cometh” they will be prepared to say, or have already said, like a guarded watchful household; though they know neither the day nor the hour, they will be in readiness. They will not be injuriously surprised by the solemn visitation which is to destroy the wicked. But in that hour, the saints of the heavenly places will be seen in the train of Him who comes as the thief. As the heavenly army they will then accompany Him (Joel 3:1-11, see ver. 9). For we are abundantly taught that to exercise the power of that day in company with the Lord is part of their promised honor. (Col. 3:4; Rev. 2:26, 27; 17:14; 19:14.) Two distinct companies, therefore, exhibit these two things. Israel will be delivered from the judgment of “the day of the Lord,” by being prepared for it in the place where it enters; and the heavenly saints, by being taken away from that place, belonging, as children of the day, to that sphere out of which the day is to pour down its light and terrors. I say not how long this previous removal may have taken place. Other scriptures may lead to that inquiry. I speak here only of the fact of that removal, and thus of the mode of the security of the heavenly saints against the day of the Lord. But I may add, that it is morally, fitting, I judge, that “the more excellent way,” so to call it, should be prepared for them.

And these two modes of deliverance can scarcely fail to remind us of Enoch and Noah. Enoch knew that a day of the Lord was coming, for he prophesied of it (Jude 14, 16). So did Noah, for he was told of it (Gen. 6), and that day did come. (Of course I know that it is still to come, in the full sense of Enoch's prophecy.) But Enoch had been previously removed (Gen. 5). And Noah was prepared for it in the place it visited. And all this, I quite believe, has mystic or typical meaning for us. Now in reading 1 Thess. 5 I do not at all doubt that the fear of being kept here on the earth, for the hour of the thief, might arise in the mind of the disciples. And I believe that it did, for that fear, as I judge, becomes, in its season, the occasion of the second Epistle, in which the apostle sets himself to correct the error which sprung from that fear. For as I observed under another meditation, he separates the coming of the Lord from the day of the Lord, attaching our gathering to His coming, and the exercise of judgment in the earth to His day. And in this way their minds, which had been in fear, would be fully relieved. Their fear had come from an imperfect reading of the first Epistle, or from some source which would have worked in the same way, and that epistle at least had not given them ease. But their relief would come from the second, telling them that they should be separated from the house ere the thief enter it. And let me add that the coming of the Lord in the character of a thief in the night, is always (if I judge rightly) connected with this return to the earth, or the coming of the Son of man, i.e., the day of the Lord (Matt. 24; Luke; 1, Thess. 5; 2, Pet. 3). It is connected with the manifestation of judgment, and not with the Lord meeting His saints in the air, or with His coming again to receive them unto Himself.

The duty of watchfulness, most surely, is a moral duty of common enforcement. “What I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch.” Nothing that could be said as to the strict prophetic application of the Lord's coming as a thief in the night, should, for a moment, be allowed to weaken the sense of the common duty of watching. It is, therefore, in the full spiritual power of this, as being of common concern that it is said, “If therefore, thou wilt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief.” But still I say, that as prophetic of a given step, or action in the divine purpose, the coming of the Lord as a thief in the night intimates His surprising the earth in the day of His judgment of it. “As a snare shall it (the day of the Son of man) come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth.”

According to this, I read Rev. 16:15. I find the coming of the Lord there spoken of under this figure, and announced as belonging to the time when that faction has been formed on the earth which is to bring Him back. And the reappearing of this figure “the thief in the night,” at this place of scripture, is evidence to me that this word of scripture contemplates an earthly action. And let me ask, let me put it to the thoughts of brethren, does it suit our minds or our hearts to speak of the Lord's coming to meet His saints in the air under such a figure as this I Jesus then comes, and His reward is with Him, He comes as the bright and morning star. He comes again to receive us to Himself, having prepared mansions in heaven for us. He comes with the voice of the archangel. Our conversation is already in that very place from whence He comes, and the bride is ever in spirit bidding Him welcome. Is a coming, thus variously and gloriously spoken of, to take its likeness from the coming of a nightly thief? Never, I believe, does the Spirit give it such. “That day shall not overtake you as thief.” His day will surprise all who dwell on the face of the whole earth after that pattern; but He meets His heavenly ones, already in the spirit of their minds there from whence He comes, with other thoughts altogether. If we, therefore, consult all the scriptures which speak of “the thief in the night,” we shall find, I think, that such a coming of the Lord does not connect itself with the mystery of His meeting the saints in the air, though it most surely addresses our souls in the power of an exhortation to watchfulness. Rev. 16:15 is not, I therefore in submission suggest, a note of the time at which the saints of the heavenly places are borne upward to meet the Lord. On 2 Peter 3 where the same figure, as we know, is used, I would just add a word——that, in the brilliant and distinguished prophecy which occupies that chapter, the apostle clusters objects together (not confusedly, most surely, but still together) very much in the style of the prophets. It is as though the mantle of the prophets of the circumcision had fallen upon the apostle of the circumcision when he prophesies. But of course I say this, as remembering that all was but the penmanship of the Holy Ghost; believing, however, that this style is to be observed as a help to a right interpretation of that grand prophetic scripture.

Here, I will now leave this deeply interesting subject, desiring I trust unfeignedly, that the light of His own word may either rebuke or sanction all our thoughts as they need.

2 Peter 2, &c., &c. It has been observed, that in the epistles, we get constant warning of certain things which were to happen in the course of the present dispensation, which is sufficient notice to us of delay being put on the coming of the Lord. I grant that we have this warning again and again. “Latter days” and “latter times” are marked by strong moral characters. Grievous wolves also were to enter. Perverse things were to be spoken, and thus both from without and within danger and evil were to come. False teachers were to appear, as in Israel there had been false prophets. These and more than these are announced. The deep and deadly shadows of many corruptions are definitely forecast. I grant all this most surely. How could it be denied? And further, I grant that the history of the dispensation has already been making good, and, as long as it lasts, will continue to make good all these notices, and reveal the substances and terrible forms of these appalling shadows. But the apostles, who severally declare these things, attach them to that present generation, warning those to whom they ministered personally about them, and giving them instruction as to the security of their own souls against them. And at length under the ministry of one of them, the crisis of the churches or candlesticks arrives, the lights of the sanctuary are all gone out, and in the next moment the scene is changed from earth to heaven, and the elect are there (Rev. 1-4). The longer, however, the time of the present gathering from among the Gentiles goes on, and with it the unjudged field of wheat and tares, all these awful notices, I quite admit, will only be the more and more realized, as they hitherto have been. The only thing I suggest here is, that this has not made a necessary delay to our passing upward to meet the Lord, since that great crisis of the candlesticks. Certain things were to be, surely, but the saints of that day are counseled as though they were, even before that crisis. But after that crisis, the heavens are opened and the elect are seen there, as it were like Enoch, without any necessary passage through either evil or sorrow any farther, and without the needful measuring out of days and years.

(To Be Continued)

On the Return of the Lord Jesus Christ From Heaven to Meet His Saints in the Air: No. 4

I will not go on with any other scriptures which I have heard or read as used on this subject. I have taken what appeared to be principal. Much, I doubt not, has been urged which I never heard or read. And I could say with simplicity, I wait to be further instructed, if so be there is light from the Lord.

I would not close, however without adding a few suggestions of a freer character, as to the ground on which my present thoughts rest. And in the first place, I ask, if the seventieth week of Daniel be reserved, as we know it is, and if the previous sixty-nine weeks concerned Daniel's city and people, Jerusalem and the Jews, are we not to conclude, that the reserved seventieth week concerns itself with them also? And if the Apocalypse treat of the last week, are we not to read it also in connection with the same, that is, with Jewish saints? I believe so; though I fully admit that they, in a sense, represent us, inasmuch as they will then stand, as we do now, in the faith and confession of Jesus. I fully admit, also, as to the same book, that the Lord Jesus is hidden during the action of it till chap. 19; I never had a thought that He was personally manifested till then. And, further, I admit that, in the same wondrous book, He is not on His own throne; I altogether allow that—surely I must. This, however, I must also add, that in the action of that book, He does not appear as a priest in the sanctuary—but though presented in different aspects and under various symbols, yet, in not one of them, as High Priest of our profession, making intercession for us. This is much to be observed. It shows that the action is peculiar. And I judge that the throne in chap. 4 which presides over the whole action till chap. 20 is therefore peculiar also. It is not simply the present throne nor the millennial throne, but the throne in, the heavens, having taken to itself certain attributes and powers suited to the peculiar action of those days which the book itself contemplates.

I have thus cleared my way a little, in order to state what is my strong conviction, long since suggested to me by a much loved brother, and never since then removed from my mind, that the election now gathering from the Gentiles is to be removed to meet the Lord in the air before the time of Rev. 4 There had been nothing I believe in the earlier parts of scripture to hinder this. The consideration I have been giving to different scriptures had that point in view. But, while, as I have judged, there is nothing to hinder this, there were some notices to prepare us for it. Jesus had said, “I will come again and receive you unto myself.” Paul had taught that we should be taken up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and on account of His coming he had comforted the saints against His day. All the apostles had kept the hearts of the elect in the attitude of hourly expectation. But these were but notices faint and precursory till we get the disclosure of the great fact, that the saints have been borne away to heaven at some untold moment, from whence it is given them to survey, and be interested in, the terrible action of the last days. (Rev. 4; 5; 6; 14; 15; 19)

The crowned elders represent or symbolize a company of redeemed sinners, whose place and inheritance are heavenly. The inquiry is, “Where are they who are thus represented during the action of the book of the Apocalypse?”

This is a question among us, suggested by the scriptures, lawful, therefore, to be entertained in a spirit of godly fear, as well as in a spirit of liberty. My judgment is that they are actually in heaven, having previously ascended there in their glorious bodies. The grounds of thus judging I would submit to my brethren, companion of the joy of these inquiries of the temple.

These mystic personages, when first presented to our view, form part of the order and court of heaven. Nor do they then appear as though they had only that moment reached the place, for there is nothing of the freshness of admiration which might suitably be expressed by those who were just opening their eyes on the celestial glory, but there is the calmness of a people familiar with it, Chap. 4. A central throne appears in the scene, having taken to itself this expression that the time had come when the Lord in heaven was again conceiving remembrance (so to speak) of the earth, for the rainbow is seen round it. But as the earth is not to be brought into the joy and full power of its covenant, till it be purged of all that corrupts it, we find lightnings, thunderings, and voices, in attendance on the throne, as well as the rainbow; all this giving witness that the time had arrived when the earth becomes the object of interest and attention in heaven. For the power on the throne there must put forth destructive judgments, which shall destroy the destroyers of the earth, before it can array itself with the earth, its desired companion in the glory; as it is written, “heaven is my throne, earth is my footstool.”

The mystic personages of whom I speak are part and parcel of this august scenery. But if, as I said, they do not appear there, as though they were only fresh in the admiration of the heavenly beauties, so they do not appear as though they were personally anxious about the tremendous action, for which the powers in heaven are getting themselves ready. They are not awed by the thunder, or scared by the lightning, or quake, like Moses, before the voice; but clothed in white, crowned with gold, and seated on thrones, they keep up the constant worship of God, and in conscious elevation above all water-floods, glory in all that is round them. In this manner they are introduced to us.

The question of the inheritance of that earth, which has now, as we have just seen, become the object of attention in heaven, arises after this, and very naturally so. If the earth be now to be purged, and then brought into connection with heaven again; if the moment have arrived for thunders, and lightnings, and voices to break from the throne, and for the bow to encircle it, the time has also come for settling the inheritance and government of the earth, or for the book or title-deed of that inheritance to be opened.

Accordingly, this in its order is done. The book is seen in the right hand of Him who sits on the throne; and after a general challenge of all creation, none is found either “worthy” or “able” to take it and open it but the Lamb that was slain, the Lion of the tribe of Judah. But His taking it at once becomes the occasion of universal joy. Everything and every one in their several way and measure express this; for this taking of the Book had given notice that the whole creation was soon to be made again the inheritance of Him whose right it is.

Chap. 5. But here I would pause a little. This burst of joy is but anticipatory—no doubt of that. For the time of Rev. 5 is not the time of millennial kingdom—the restitution of all things, or creation's jubilee. This universal pulse of gladness is therefore all anticipative, most surely. But this we observe, that it is in heaven the living creatures and crowned elders sing their anticipated joy. It is in heaven they sing as much as the angels. Every creature joins, but each in its proper place. For, as at the moment of Adam's sin, the creatures, in the ear of the Spirit, became groaners after deliverance (Rom. 8.), so now, when the Lamb is owned as “Lord of the world to come,” and as about to possess Himself of His kingdom, in the ear of the same Spirit, these groans are turned into praises. The prisoners of hope get bright pledges of a glorious deliverance. Beautiful and precious is this momentary and universal rapture. And in the midst of it we hear the mystic ones, of whom I speak, uttering their part in their heavenly places; even angels themselves forming a larger and outer circle around them.

But I proceed.

The book of the inheritance, which conveys the government of the earth to the Lamb, and which has now found its way into the hand of the Lamb, is sealed with seven seals, as it were, closing up some action which is to be gone through, or performed, ere this government can be settled under the Lamb. The living creatures appear in the closest personal intimacy with the act of opening those seals by the Lamb. The Lamb alone opens, but they are very near Him. Perfect in its place all this is. The Lamb, as we saw, alone had “worthiness” or “ability” to touch the book. But the living creatures have just owned their share in the now expected inheritance and government, and therefore are naturally and fitly near the book; and as being already in the secret of it, they call the servant of God “to come and see,” while the Lamb opens the first four of the seals. This is a high notice of these honored creatures. We saw them before exercised in heavenly worship, forming a company nearer the throne even than angels but here we see them intimate with heavenly secrets, which the prophet of God had to learn. This bespeaks, (if we hear it, beloved,) the joy and thankfulness, and praise of our hearts. Are the heights of glory thus ours? Are intimacies of heaven thus ours? But we are to see greater wonders yet.

After the opening of the sixth seal, among other things, we get presented to us a company who had been delivered out of the great tribulation; for such tribulation will immediately precede or wait upon the period of the sixth seal. But then we again see the living creatures and crowned elders; for one of them, one of the twenty-four elders, explains to John who this delivered company had been. Chap. 7. Surely this too is full of the same dignity, and very significant. Here they appear in the place of heavenly knowledge again, able to instruct the chief of the prophets; and they are also apart from the noble army of martyrs. And I feel that we are not to pass by all this, for these are high aid heavenly places surely.

The first series of actions that are under the seals, ends here. On the opening of the 7th seal another action begins, that of the seven trumpets. Over these seven trumpets seven angels preside. But upon the blowing of the seventh of them, our mystic objects are again seen. For the time of this 7th trumpet brings the course of events up to the eve of the kingdom, and in that bright prospect, the twenty-four elders celebrate the Lord God Almighty, and all the glorious results of his taking to Him his great power. And in this we get them connected, though but shortly, with the trumpets as well as with the seals. Chap. 8-11. There is an action then which may be termed that of the dragon and the beasts with its results, in which the living ones are again for a moment noticed, and noticed in a place of much honor, in 'close neighborhood to the throne, and apart from the company on Mount Zion, as we saw them apart from the martyrs in the seventh chapter. Chap. 12-14 — I pass this however, and look more particularly at the next series of actions, or the pouring out of the seven vials of wrath. Seven angels come forward, and one of the four living creatures gives them seven vials containing the judgments of God, and the angels empty these vials, or pour out these judgments on the dire and doomed places.

Here then, in this action, our personages fill a place of distinguished honor. In the mystery of seals, they were in the place of wisdom, calling John the prophet to the secrets of the book: but here they are rather in the place of power, committing the instruments of vengeance to the ministers of vengeance. Through other parts of the book they have been seen in greater intimacy with the throne than angels; but here was something beyond that—they arm angels with the implements of their service. Chap. 15, 16 — Babylon is the scene of the next great mystery in this book of wonders. But in it the living creatures and crowned elders do not expressly appear. Chap. 17, 18. The marriage in heaven then takes place, and for the last time our mystic Ones appear. The twenty-four elders and the living creatures worship God with their hallelujah, because He had judged the great whore, and had avenged the blood of God's servants upon her; and this, I may say (though they do not appear by name in the two preceding chapters), connects them expressly with Babylon, as we have seen them connected with each of the preceding actions, because Babylon is the great whore. Chap. 19 — Here, however, we lose sight of them. But continuously (I may say, after this review) from the moment the heaven was opened to take up John in chap. 4 to this moment in chap. 19 when the heaven is again opened to let down the white-horsed rider and His army, we have seen them there in all the calm and happy sense of home, acquainted with the secrets, and entrusted with the resources, of that high and holy place — John, the prophet, instructed by them, angels that excel in strength armed by them, and other redeemed ones at times taking their place apart from and around them.

I ask, then, where have they been all this time? As all this mystic scene passes before us, does it convey no certainty as to the inquiry? Where have those who are symbolized by these mysteries had their place all this time? Does it betoken that they have been actually in heaven or on earth? I wait to learn why I am not to consider them in heaven as really as the throne itself, the Lamb, or the angels. Are they seen in the place out of which the judgments come, or upon which they come? Is the sphere where they move above or below? Are they in company with the throne all through these actions, or tossed amid the agitations of the earth? Nay, are they not distinct from those who pass through the great tribulation itself, speaking of them most expressly as apart from themselves? Were I to go through these chapters unaffected by any prejudices, I know not that I could get more full and clear answers to these inquiries than they afford me, I grant, however, that I am to read them in company with all scripture, and if any other part of God's most precious book note this point, I must re-read these chapters, not allowing myself to take them or listen to them alone. But as yet, at least, I have not found such.

I fully admit that, during the action of these chapters and in different stages of it, certain other companies take their place in heaven. I have no doubt that there is a heavenly people on earth during this action, or at least the greater part of it, and that such in their season will be taken to their distinct heavenly place.

But this leaves me still at liberty to say that those who are represented by these mystic persons have been there throughout the whole of it. The action itself is neither that of the present dispensation, where Christ is in heaven alone interceding for us, nor is it that of the coming or millennial dispensation, when the heaven and earth will be parts of one temple with their several happy families, but an intervening action of a corrective or judicial character preparing the way of the kingdom.

Here, then, I rest, waiting for further instruction from any, if there be light from the Lord, as He gives it now through His word. But at present I cannot gainsay the conclusion that arises from all this. I cannot feel warranted to depart from the simplicity of the word, or to assume anything beyond what the first impression naturally conveys, that there is a company of redeemed ones actually in heaven, or in the place of the throne of God, before this action of the Apocalypse begins.

Perhaps, however I might suggest a few objections.

1St. It may be said that the four and twenty crowned elders express only the disembodied spirits of saints. I would answer that I do not think we can give this interpretation, because they not only appear in so different a place and condition and are as tangible and visible (so to speak) as angels themselves, but they actually minister, as we have seen, to the action that is going on, and help to conduct it to its great issue.

2ndly. It may be said that their appearance in heaven is only in anticipation of their place (that being heavenly) in the age of the kingdom. I would answer that I do not think we can say this, because the action here is so entirely different from what it will be in the kingdom. Here it is corrective or judicial upon an unpurged earth, there it will be in happy government of a restored earth. And beside, they are as crowned elders all through this action, but as soon as it is over, and the kingdom comes, they are lost to our sight as such, and we see them only as the Lamb's wife.

3rdly. It may be said that those represented by these symbols are the saints still really on the earth, and only in spirit, or in the purpose of God in heaven, as we read in Eph. 2. But, I answer, the analogy seems to me to fail, because the Epistle to the Ephesians shows the saints to be in heaven only as in Christ, or in the spirit of their calling, but actually on the earth; the Apocalypse shows these mystic ones to be actually in heaven, and only in spirit or in sympathy (as watching an action at a distance in which they are deeply interested) on earth. And this is to me rather contrast than similitude. Besides, during this action, the heavenly and earthly spheres are kept very distinct, and those of whom I speak are always in the heavenly. And again, John, who in spirit is called there, is at times down on earth, and even when in heaven, appears there in a way different from them. He appears to be there as a stranger or a visitor, but they are as fully at home as the throne, or the Lamb, or the angels.

Again I say, I wait to be instructed; but I cannot but judge that these testimonies from the book itself and these considerations, lead to a conclusion very simple to a mind unprejudiced.

I do indeed judge that there has been a mistake in confounding the saints who form the elders with the saints under the last apostasy and the beast. This has been suggested to me by another; and I believe most justly. The saints of the Most High (Dan. 7) cry “how long wilt thou not avenge” (Rev. 6): at least this is characteristic of them. And their prayers bring earthquake and thunder (Rev. 8). They have part in the first resurrection; but such as this is their characteristic; and they pass to the throne, as I have already said, only through death (Rev. 14:13; 20:4), on which character of journey, so to speak, we know that the saints now gathering do not depend (1 Cor. 15:51). And this again distinguishes the two classes—death being not, in this way, a necessary stage now to the heavens as it will be (Rev. 13:15). For as being killed, the title of the Apocalyptic saints to take part in the first resurrection comes. How then, I may ask, can 1 Cor. 15:51 wait for the time of the Apocalypse? This long since occurred to me, and I find that it has struck the minds of others quite independently. But what say we to all these things? Why, though they may be clear to one's own mind, yet how happy is it to know that these things and the like, are the very material in which Peter says, that there is much hard to be understood (2 Peter 3) and that may give us happy forbearance one with another.

I, however, press on for a little longer. In the fourth chapter, as I observed, we see the living creatures and crowned elders round the central throne of God Almighty in the heavens. The action in the course of the book changes, the place of these mystic personages never does. They are interested in the action, they sing and rejoice at certain stages of it, but they are never engaged in it, or leave their high habitations. This chapter exhibits them there, every succeeding one confirms this; and must we not say, therefore, that they had been previously taken there I believe that we have many notices which are enough to prepare us for such an event as this, though I know it is a difficulty to many—I mean the event here intimated, a secret rapture of the saints. I do not say that we have a single type of it, but only this, that we have many things which might prepare us for it. Horses and chariots filled the mountains, but the prophet's servant had no eve for them till the Lord gave him one. Neither would that prophet himself have witnessed the flight of his master, if his soul had not passed through a testing and fitting process. Daniel was given to look on a very glorious and heavenly stranger, and to hear his voice, as the voice of a multitude; but the men who stood beside him saw nothing—only a terror fell on them. The glory on the holy hill shone only in the eyes of Peter, James, and John, though there was a brightness there like that of the sun, which might have lighted up all the land. Many bodies of saints arose, but it was not only those to whom it was given, that ever knew of their resurrection; for no mere eye or ear of man, as such, conversed with that great occasion. The heaven was opened to Stephen, and Jesus and the glory seen by him there; but the assembled people saw nothing. If Paul went to paradise in the body (and whether he did or not we will not say), none saw him. As when Philip was borne from Gaza to Azotus, no one traced his flight, for the Spirit carried him In the presence and voice of Jesus which arrested Saul on his journey to Damascus, there was no word for the ear of his companions, nor form of man for their eyes: all was mere glare and sound; but Saul saw and heard it all and for a time conversed with it. Have not, therefore all the circumstances which are to attend on the rapture of the saints been thus anticipated? And yet, silence and secrecy, in a great sense, mark them all.

We have in these several visions and audience, resurrections, flights, and ascensions, the glory down here, and the heavens opened up there, and yet man a stranger to it all. And this is simple and easy. For all the things belonged to the regions and energies of the Spirit, lying beyond the range of the natural faculties. “The natural man discerneth not the things of the Spirit of God.” The eye and the ear are not attuned to the appearances or voices of the Spirit, if the Spirit please it not. And let me add, that beyond all these, Jesus rose, and rose too forth from a tomb of hard hewn stone, and from amid a guard of wakeful soldiers; but no ear or eye of man was in that secret. And this resurrection of Jesus is a first-fruits. And after He was risen, though He might have walked the earth before, He was seen only by those to whom it was given Him to appear (Acts 10:40). And He could vanish out of sight as He pleased, or appear in various guises as He pleased, and none could trace Him. This last is the greatest instance; but all of these are notices helping us to apprehend how silence and secrecy may, if the Lord will, wait on the coming of the Lord from heaven to meet His saints in the air. I am sure that this presents a difficulty to many who would not dare, in their own strength, to grapple with the plain words of God. But at present I feel that I should be doing wrong to the claims of scripture, were I to refuse to believe that there are saints gathered into heaven at some untold moment between the times of Rev. 3 and 4. The joy of chap. 5 has been said to be but anticipatory: I grant it most surely. How could it but be so, seeing that the time of that chapter is not the millennium, nor the season of creation's joy! But this I say, also, that this anticipation is felt by each of the three companies—the redeemed elders, the angels, and all creatures, in their due places at that time, and the elders or living ones feel it in heaven. All whom the Son of man takes away in His day He will take away in judgment, after the pattern of the wicked antediluvians (Matt. 24:38, 39). But the saints are not to be taken away in judgment, but to glory. Their removal finds its pattern, therefore, in that of Enoch, who was borne away to heaven before the flood or day of the Lord swept off the wicked from the face of the earth. Enoch was first taken to glory in heaven at some moment which did not depend on any event; and no one we may suggest, saw his rapture. Then comes the hour of ripened iniquity in the earth; and in that day the generation of the ungodly are taken away by a flood, and the earthly saint left for the new world here.

But, beloved, no more. With entire freedom of heart I can say, I do not desire to lead the opinions of others. Even our knowledge of truth itself is but little worth to the soul, if it have not been attained by exercise of the renewed affections before God. And opinions are poor human things, the fruit of man's midnight lamp, at which he eats the bread of literary carefulness. And how can the saint value them? But if we walk together with right desires, though it may be in much remaining ignorance, we may assure ourselves, even at this still later hour of the day, that our Lord will not refuse us both His light and His company, as once to our brothers on their way to Emmaus. Do not, however, let me intimate that I find no difficulties in considering this great subject. Indeed I do; and besides difficulties, I am going to say this, that I think there may be some indistinctness as to it purposely left on the page of scripture, in order to keep the saints in health of soul, maintaining them in spirit still, and ever longing for Jesus till His return, and yet being in divine strength, ready to reach Him by death through flames and floods. For indeed, the soul's lively, hopeful, suffering energies are far beyond well-ordered and carefully digested conceptions of these things. And sure, sure I am, that our Lord has another purpose touching us as His disciples or pupils, than the merely having us of one opinion by dint of the study of the Bible. For poor is the communion our souls have tasted as the fruit of that. And I will add one other thought—that though I see nothing necessarily delaying our rapture into the air, nothing put as a drag upon it, yet I know and allow that many things are to be done on the earth before the full form of evil be revealed, or the reserved week of Daniel begin. The nations of the East may have either to be reproduced or organized, and all of the prophetic words about Babylon, Edom, Tire, and the rest of these may have to be accomplished in the ancient sites of these famous cities and lands of the peoples. I do not deny this; and we know that much is to be done with Israel and with Judah, morally and politically, and with the land that is theirs by gift of God. And the West is to be got ready as the platform of a serious action ere the crisis comes, or its precursors in the seventieth week. Nor would I deny that a full 6000 years as to man's world is to tell itself out ere “the world to come” be displayed in its holy fruitfulness and beauty. And I grant that the present dispensation may still go on, because God's long-suffering is salvation, and He waits to be gracious. But still I add, that none of this is made necessary to our removal. We are not to be remembering days and years, though of course, the longer we live, the nearer is our salvation. Nor have we to ponder the, ways of the nations, though of course the maturer the iniquity, the more fit for the judgment.

But “come Lord Jesus” is ever to be the desire of the utterance. “Hope of our hearts, O Lord appear” is a song, I believe, most suited to the worship of our congregations. And let me just add, that I grieve very specially over some prevailing thoughts on this subject, because they threaten to sully the heavenly atmosphere of our assemblies, and give check to the happier and more abundant flow of hope and joy in our souls. This would be bad indeed. Even increase of knowledge, with decline in the spirit of worship, would be bad. With this, however, I desire that our souls may be kept in patience. We should count the resistance of the world no “strange thing,” take it what shape it may. We should all deem it a very likely thing that, instead of being at once with the Lord, we may have to answer for the profession of His name at the stake, or in captivity and loss of all things. O for the great conquering grace! O for hearts big with the expectation of Jesus, but ready also not only to suffer shame but to die for His name?

I say no more. May the Lord hinder the confidence of our hearts together, from being soiled by suspicions and conjectures! A second journey across the Jordan will be worth the time and labor, if it hinder that, to prove that no altar has been raised to our own imaginations. Let us call each other's spiritual senses into exercise, but not seek either to frighten or to school others into our way of thinking. For on such subjects, even an inspired apostle, as I noticed before, used this chastened style, “I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant;” at the same time, as he also tells us in the same place, opening these mysteries, not for the filling of the mind of the disciples with opinions, but for the guiding of their hearts with right affections, saying to them, “lest ye should be wise in your own conceits.” Let us then, beloved, get the apostle's taste and spirit, as well as his knowledge. A brother's spirit is more edifying than his communication. We experience that every day. And let us take a hint from another, “to aim to gather knowledge more from meditation than from study, and to have it dwell in us, not as opinions, but as the food of communion, the quickener of hope, the husbandman of divine charity, and the blessed refreshing of the kingdom of God within us.” I esteem it holier to confess difficulties than to grapple with them, in either the ingenuity or the strength of intellect, And surely it is bad when some fond thought or another is made the great object. It soon works itself into the central place, and becomes the gathering point. The order of the soul is disturbed, and the real godly edifying of the saints hindered. For we have to remember that knowledge is only a small part in the wide field of our husbandry (2 Peter 1:5-7). An appetite for it needs to be regulated rather than gratified. And many who, in. their husbandry have raised far less of it than others, have more abundantly prospered in bringing forth richer fruits in service, and in charity, and in personal love to Jesus.

May the Lord deepen in the souls of all His saints the power of His own redeeming love, and shed more and more among us the savor of His precious and honored name!

But I desire still to add another thought. The sense of the nearness of the glory should be deeply cherished by our hearts, and we need to be at no effort to persuade ourselves of it. It is taught us richly in the word “Whom he justified, them he also glorified,” is sentence which intimates this. It tells us of the path and the title to glory, When by faith we stand justified by the blood of Christ, we are at once made meet for the inheritance of the saints in light. And the path to it being thus simple, the place of it is near, and its capacity to unfold or manifest itself lies in the compass of a moment or of the twinkling of an eye, if the Lord please.

The congregation of Israel were set at the door of the tabernacle to acquaint themselves with their high priest and his ways. They took knowledge of his consecration and services, and then the glory appeared. That glory was just waiting within its vail, and all it wanted was a title to show itself, an object worthy of its visitation. And as soon as the congregation stand in the value of the priesthood, the glory finds this object. This is very expressive of the nearness to the camp in which it was all the while dwelling (Lev. 8, 9). Just so at the introduction of the ark into the temple afterward (2 Chron. 5), and at the creation of the tabernacle before (Ex. 40). And on these occasions the glory appeared to cause triumph and gladness, for the scenes it visited were ready first. But this was not always so. A light surprised the persecutor as he journeyed to Damascus. It was above the brightness of the sun at noon-day. And well it might have been, for it was a beam from the glory and bore the Lord of the glory upon it (Isa. 24:23). But it did not come to gladden Saul all at once or merely to display itself. It had, I may say, weightier business on hand. It came to make this ruthless persecutor a citizen of its own native land. It begins, therefore, by laying him in ruins before it. It is the light of Gideon's pitcher confounding the host of Midian or the army of the uncircumcised. Saul falls to the earth. He takes the sentence of death into him. He learns that he had been madly kicking against the pricks, destroying himself by his enmity to Jesus, for that Jesus was the Lord of the glory. But He that wounds can heal, He that heals can make alive. “Rise and stand upon thy feet,” says the Lord of glory to him and he is quickly made His companion, servant, and fellow-heir. It is sweetly characteristic of the present age that the hand of a fellow disciple is used to strengthen Saul to bear the glory, or to accomplish his conversion. The seraphim alone do that for Isaiah (chap. 6), the Spirit does it for Ezekiel (chap. 2), the hand of the Son of man does it for Daniel (chap. 10); but a fellow-disciple is made to do it for Saul.

What a transaction was this! what a moment! Never, perhaps, had such points in the furthest distance met before. The persecutor of the flock and the Savior of the flock, the Lord of the glory and the sinner whom the glory is consuming, are beside each other! The glory came, not to gladden, as it had the congregation of old, but to convict, and through conviction and revelation of itself and Jesus to turn a sinner from darkness to light, making him a meet partaker of the inheritance of its native land. Can we trust all this and rejoice in it? Is it pleasant to us to know that the glory is thus near us? Stephen found it so when the Lord of it pleased to raise the curtain (Acts 7). And when the voice of the archangel summons it, and the trump of God heralds it, it will be here again as in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, to bear us up to its own country (1 Cor. 15, 1 Thess. 4).

Thus may we cherish the thought that the glory is near us. Our translation to its native land asks but for a moment, for the twinkling of an eye. The title is simple, the path is short, and the journey rapidly accomplished. “Whom he justified, them he also glorified.”

On the Return of the Lord to Meet His Saints in the Air: No. 2

Matt. 13 The parable of the wheat and tares has been much used to the same intent, forbidding, as is judged, the thought of our meeting the Lord in the air till the end of the age, or the time of the judicial cleansing of the earth.

I take leave to look at it, therefore, a little particularly, desiring to remember that the word is the teacher, and we are only to learn. At the close of chap. 12 our Lord had looked on the apostate condition of Israel, and found all there ready for judgment. In the figure of the unclean spirit returning to dwell in the desert house, he gives notice of the matured state of evil in Israel (12:45), but then in the course of the next chapter (13) another thing shows itself; that He is only leaving one scene of apostasy for another—that He is to find apostasy or corruption in that dispensation, called “the kingdom of heaven,” as He had just found it in Israel (i.e. in the field of the world, as well as in the house of the Jew). Being disappointed of all fruit in Israel, He becomes a sower again—a sower of good seed; but His ground soon yields Him a mingled crop of wheat and tares. This is the first impression, I believe, to be received from this chapter.

But, of course, there is much more, for the Lord goes on to give the history of the two kinds of seed in a general way, onward to the harvest. Thus, as to “the tares,” He presents them under two figures of the “mustard seed” and the “leaven.” As to the “wheat” they also appear in two characters, the “treasure” and the “pearl.” The quality and value of the two kinds of seed are thus, as in figures, taught us; and at the close, in the parable of the drag-net, the separation of the two is declared, or the putting apart forever the tares and the wheat, the good and the bad fish, the children of the kingdom and the children of the wicked one. I therefore quite allow that this chapter deals with the history of Christendom, but as surely judge that in this history of the dispensation, the Lord does not design to fill out the whole scene, or give every feature in the picture—quite according to the divine method. I have already noticed certain details in a great, grand subject, remaining untold for awhile, or reserved for a more due season—as the great Teacher Himself says, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” The taking of the saints into the air, to meet their descending Lord, before He reach the earth in judgment, was a part of the great mystery which might well have been reserved for a season beyond the time of Matt. 13. And it appears from the clearest testimony of the passage itself that it was so reserved, and advisedly passed without notice, because in this parable of the wheat and the tares the removal of the “children of the wicked one” is made the first action, “gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them.” The judgment of the wicked is made the first act in the proceeding here contemplated; and we all know and acknowledge that it will be prior to the manifestation of the saints in the kingdom, but as surely ulterior to the ascension of the saints into the air. That is, the wicked will be cleared away by the judgment before the righteous shine forth in the kingdom, but not before they meet their Lord in the air. This is of common consent among us. We may differ as to the length of the interval, but we may assume it to be a point of common consent that the meeting the Lord will precede the cutting off the ungodly, or the burning of the tares. And this determines the suggestion that the Lord has passed by the rapture in the circumstances of this parable. And accordingly He speaks of the harvest as the shining of the saints in the kingdom. This is language which also verifies the same suggestion. The rapture into the air, and the shining or manifestation of the kingdom are not the same action, as the house of the Father and the kingdom of the Father are not formally the same place. I may therefore conclude that the strict language of the parable (if we try its value by the rule of strict literal exactness) compels us to say that the taking of the saints into the air is advisedly passed by.

And I may just add that the word, “let both grow together until the harvest,” had more of a moral character than has been given to it. It was said to check the impatient thought of present judgment. The Lord's word was rather to the heart and conscience of His mistaken servants—happy, by the way, to see they were spoken of as servants, though mistaking. May we have increased grace and wisdom from Himself.

Luke 19:12-27. It has been observed that this parable gives us to know that the saints of the heavenly places are to continue here in the place of service till the Lord come back—or that when He returns to the earth He will find them at their work. My observation on Matt. 13 may generally, I believe, apply to this. For such a construction of the parable, as the above conclusion gives it, I have no doubt, is too literally exact. For it is plain that the Lord had no design by this parable to instruct us fully in all the mysteries of His absence in the distant country. For much more, as we know, awaited Him then, than the getting Himself a kingdom; and more was to attend on His return than the rewards of His servants and the excision of His enemies. In this parable, therefore, He does not design to tell the whole secret, but He set Himself to correct the thought that the kingdom of God was immediately to appear. And He gives such a view of the mystery as fully answers that end. It is the kingdom He is treating of, for it was the kingdom, and its time of appearing, that the thoughts of the multitude were now upon. The rewards of that kingdom, and the clearing the scene of it of the rebel citizens, He anticipates and teaches; and if these things, if these features in the mystic picture are all that are taught, there is something omitted, just as in the preceding case of the wheat and tares. The Lord postpones the kingdom to His absence in the distant country and return here. That is most sure, and the rewards of His servants wait for that kingdom most certainly also. But we all consent, on the testimony of many scriptures, that ere His feet again touch the scene of His kingly power, He will have met His saints in the air. And therefore to say that He is to find them at work here is too precise. I am sure from these samples of a certain character of interpretation that it errs in a too literal exactness from not duly considering the purpose of the Spirit in the given scripture. If the purpose be moral, designing to affect the conscience or move the heart, and I read it as if it were prophetic or historical, designing to teach mysteries, I shall miss my way through it. If, for instance, I read Psa. 105, 106, as a piece of history, or as purposing to give me merely God's dealings with Israel, and Israel's dealings with God, I should say, and contend for it too, that in the land of Egypt the plague of darkness came before that of frogs, and that in the wilderness the sin of Korah preceded the sin of the golden calf. But this would all be error, and great historical inaccuracy, though strict interpretation and accuracy as to the Psalm The moment however, I discover that the Spirit's purpose in these Psalm is not historical but moral, to convict the conscience of the Jew, and not merely to remind him of the history of his nation; then instead of being stumbled by this inaccuracy, I am delighted with all, and admire it; for I find in it the language which is spoken among ourselves every day. For when we refer to past events for the purpose of illustrating some moral lesson, or enforcing some duty, we feel warranted in not observing strictly the times or other mere circumstances of such events; whereas, were we proposing to convey historic information about them, integrity, as well as a desire to accomplish our purpose, would make us careful of every circumstance. I strongly feel this, and discern in it God's most perfect as well as most precious word. For He speaks to us, blessed be His name for it, in our well known language, and not with the voice of a barbarian, nay, with the wisdom of the schools of man. But accuracy of a certain character (human or scholastic, and not scriptural or divine, I am sure) spoils all this, and robs the soul of the mind of God. I suggest this, as it occurred to me while considering the conclusion drawn from the parable in Luke 19. But as to the parable itself, I might again say that we cannot, I surely judge sustain such a conclusion; because, as I observed, we must all admit that the Lord has passed by some of the action in the scene of His second advent, designing principally, if not merely, to correct the thought of an immediate kingdom here on earth. He passes by the act of our meeting Him in the air, before He comes to share the kingdom with us, which is as clearly declared in another scripture as that He will have a kingdom in the earth is declared here. For I cannot but assume it to be a truth of common consent, that the meeting in the air will go before the kingdom, or even judgment on the earth. I assume that none of us will suppose that the Savior will have come here and parceled out the honor and authorities of the kingdom among His faithful servants, and then go back in order to come again to meet them in the air according to another scripture. Our meeting Him in the air must be before He touches the earth.

2 Thess. 1. This chapter has been much used to affirm the thought that the saint cannot possibly be removed from the present scene of trial till the Lord return to the earth in judgment. I do not wonder at the influence which it has had to such an end. I own that it appears to have much that favors it, and let me say, that I have never, even in thought, held lightly those dear brethren who have adopted the opposite view on the great and interesting question I am considering in this paper. I have not, for a moment, with a disparaging thought, wondered at them, or felt that they had nothing to say for themselves, or judged them as not duly reverencing God's word—never for a moment. I have not, I may say, even been tempted to such thoughts of them. But still I am to “prove all things,” and not be divided either by my respect or love for them. I do not think, then, that the support, which they have derived from this chapter, is more than apparent or superficial. The apostle is speaking of judgment or recompense. Tribulation, he says, is to be recompensed to the one, and rest to the other; and that, too, on the same day, at the one great discerning moment, the hour of the Lord's return to the earth in flaming fire.

This is the teaching of the chapter. I read it as giving me the great action of awarding or recompensing righteously after this manner, between the persecuted and their oppressors, between the saints and those who have been tormenting them. But this is a different action from that of taking the saints into personal rest. To be recompensed with rest is not the same thought as to be taken into rest. I believe, moreover, that other scriptures forbid me to confound them. 1 Thess. 4, for instance, shows the saints taken into rest, and that, too, before the Lord comes to the earth in flaming fire. In that chapter the apostle exhibits Him on His way from heaven to the air; in this chapter, (2 Thess. 1) the same apostle—the same Spirit let me rather say—exhibits them coming to the earth. The voice of the archangel and the trump of God attend Him to the air; flaming fire and angels of power accompany Him to the earth. But none will say that the saints have not been actually or personally borne into rest by their ascension into the air to meet their Lord. Nay, to more than to simple rest does that journey conduct us; for all admit that Rev. 19, the marriage of the Lamb, is a scene in heaven after the saints have ascended, but before the Lord comes in judgment, and that is something more than mere rest, as all our hearts ought easily to know. So that it is plain to me that we must (let me say) with a little more exactness read this chapter, and take care not to confound personal and recompensed rest; and then we shall join in our judgment. For I fully grant that the saints will not get rest adjudged to them till the revelation of Jesus in power, or the great “day of the Lord,” when He will clear the earth of all things that offend, and share the honors of the kingdom with His faithful ones. And I may say that Rev. 11:18 is another expression of this. But our meeting Him in the air would be a moment of displayed or recompensed rest and reward.

And what affirms this distinction between rest personal and recompensed is the apostle bringing himself into the scene. “Rest with us” he says. For none of us doubt that the apostle at this moment is in actual or personal rest, though he himself thus tells us that he has not received the kind of rest which he is speaking of in this chapter. By way of illustration, I might say that nothing is more common in the affairs of life than circumstances after this pattern. How many maltreated persons are brought into actual rest and security, ere the case can be brought to trial, and the injured party be publicly vindicated, and the offender punished! It is of the righteous thing with God the apostle speaks, and the exhibition of that righteous thing. It is the kingdom of God, and judicial rest and tribulation as between two parties. But the air, when the saints alone meet their Lord, could present no such character as this. And though it may detain me over this scripture a little longer, I must add another thought. When the Lord was instructing his disciples in Matt. 24 or Luke 21, He warns them of coming troubles, such as the beginning of “sorrows,” and “the great tribulation.” But here to the Thessalonians the apostle does not speak of coming, but of present, troubles. According to which I see this plain distinction, that the Lord (Matt. 24; Luke 21) guards His disciples against the words “the time draweth near,” or against any promise of immediate rest, on this ground, that ere He should come for their relief, they must pass through sorrows. But, on the contrary, the apostle (2 Thess. 2) guards the disciples against similar words— “the day of Christ is at hand (or present)” —on this ground, that ere the Lord should come for judgment, they would be gathered to Him. advisedly separating the “coming” from the “day,” linking our gathering to Him with the “coming” and His judgment of the earth with the “day,” the same words (παρουσία and ήμέρα) being severally used here (2 Thess. 2) as before in 1 Thess. 4:15, and in chap. 5:2. I do not at all say that the coming and the day are always thus distinguishable: I believe not, the purpose of the Spirit not requiring it. But here the distinction is marked, and intended, I believe, to be so. And I cannot but think that the “coming” and “gathering” are made the ground of stability and comfort to the saints in 2 Thess. 2:1, and not merely introduced as a subject concerning which the apostle is about to treat. But I add no more.

Matt. 24 I am aware that we have been much condemned for not seeing another witness against our thoughts in the prophecy of this chapter, and for not receiving all the words of it fully to ourselves. The whole of the moral application of this grand prophetic word I desire to let in with full power upon our hearts and consciences, for, I doubt not, it all belongs to each of us. “What I say unto you, I say unto all—watch.” But I cannot judge that the saints now gathering for heaven are in the prophecy itself. I judge that those whom this chapter contemplates as being killed (ver. 9) will surely be borne by a glorious resurrection to heaven as well as the saints from amongst the Gentiles now gathering. But the preserved ones of this chapter, I believe, are preserved for the earth, like Noah in his day. For it is flesh that is saved, (ver. 22,) and the heavenly people have no interest in the saving of flesh. “Flesh and blood I cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” And after we have received the clearest instruction on this—that it is in the air that we are next to see the Lord, (1 Thess. 4,) would the words “he is in the desert,” or “he is in the secret chambers,” have seducing or deceiving attractions for us? How must we have surrendered all the light of such teaching ere we could listen to such reports! I cannot think that the Lord is anticipating us, or the present election from the Gentiles, in this prophecy. And I surely grant He is not addressing His words, and instructions, and warnings, to the Jews considered in their present unbelief, I know not how such a thought could have risen for a moment. I judge that He is looking at that remnant in Israel, who, in coming days, are to be separated from the apostate or unbelieving nation. Scripture largely speaks of such a people, and let me add, largely speaks of their state of soul, describing it, I believe, as being much more advanced in knowledge of God and His truth, than many among us (beloved ones as they are) apprehend, but who are still to be His Israel on the earth, which, in connection with Matt. 24, I might notice a little further. Thus, I believe, it is His earthly people who are not to see Him till they say, “blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.” And what intelligence there is in that cry! For it is the rejected stone, the rejected Christ, which is welcomed back in those words; and this tells us that they who utter it must be acquainted with the mystery of the death of Jesus.

And what witness does Psa. 79 bear to their condition? The preserved remnant in that psalm look to their being's people on the earth; they have no heavenly expectations, but they are able to appreciate their martyred brethren, and in a great sense identify themselves with them. And how do they, in the very next, (Psa. 80,) express their trust in the man at God's right hand as all the hope of their wasted vineyard? And must not such language be that of precious and intelligent faith? That there is a man in heaven (blessed thought! while the pen writes it down) to whom alone the expectant possessors of God's fruitful hill in Canaan are looking! All this is very strong in forming my thoughts on the spiritual condition of the elect remnant in these coming days. And again, I ask, is not “if ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established” the standing oracle? And upon it must they not believe ere they can be established? An oracle, too, that connects itself expressly with the name and revelation of Immanuel, (see Isa. 7,) as Peter attaches the hope of Israel and the expectations of the earth on Israel's repentance and conversion. (Acts 3) And what could that required repentance and conversion be, but the believing that testimony which Peter was then delivering? I am not saying that heavenly portion of the remnant may not be distinguished by larger attainments both in knowledge and in devotedness. But I believe there will be but one remnant, so to speak, in those days—one in the general character, I mean, of their moral or spiritual state; and martyrdom will be the distinct feature of the heavenly portion of them, of which Rev. 14:13 and 20:4, are, I judge, further witnesses. The dwelling together of Abraham and Lot at the same time and in the same land, the former being in principle a heavenly man, and the latter an earthly, may help us, as by analogy, to apprehend this. Abraham may have been more advanced and more devoted, I grant it. But, in a great sense, they were morally one. Lot was a righteous soul in God's account, in the heart of a Sodom world. I do therefore judge that there will be a people in Israel by and by, whose position will be in the earth, but whose hearts and consciences the Spirit will have been dealing with before Jesus manifests Himself personally. They look on His wounds under the Spirit of grace in Zech. 12; 10, but personally and actually He does not stand in the land till 14:3. These things and others of like character are strong on this point.

And in this connection I may notice Dan. 7 also, which links itself much, I believe, with this Matt. 24 For there again, the abominable desolator, under the symbol of “the little horn,” is spoken Of as one that is to shed the blood of the heavenly saints. This I entirely admit, and those martyred heavenly saints I identify with those killed according to our present chapter. (ver. 9.) But Daniel, in a very decided way, passes over the present dispensation. For those heavenly saints of his are only in connection with the little horn. But we know full well, and we ourselves are the witnesses of it, that there are heavenly saints before that time, whose history, consequently, Daniel never even touches. This, however, does not disturb or annul anything found in Daniel. Surely not: that could never be. Scripture cannot be broken. But in company with Daniel's words we are to read other words. That is, we are to remember, “It is written again,” as I have observed before. And we have to look to other words of God, beyond those by Daniel, for the full history of the heavenly saints. Dan. 7:25, Matt. 24; 9, and the prophetic part of the Apocalypse, treat only of a portion of these, and such as are connected with Israel, and the coming day, or time of the end. But I will add no more to this.

(To be continued.)

Notes of a Lecture on Revelation 12

What I intend speaking of this evening, and the idea of which is given in this chapter in allegorical expressions, is, first, the gathering up of the Church of God, the heavenly saints, to be with Christ; and then, secondly, if the time allows, the promises which we have and thereby the infallible certainty of the restoration of the Jews to their place as a nation upon the earth. Both connect themselves—otherwise it would be impossible to go into the whole subject this evening—with the manifestation of judgments in this world: only that the taking up of the saints is the taking them out of the way of those judgments. On the contrary the Jews who are to remain on the earth, and other Gentiles also, when they come to those judgments, must pass through them, as Lot passed through and above all that happened to Sodom, making his escape, yet though as by fire, while Abraham looked on upon the judgments that fell on the guilty cities of the plain. So also Noah was saved, passing through the flood, while Enoch was taken up to heaven. Those two cases are spoken of as analogous to what shall be at the coming of the Son of Man. We have in these two cases the two things of which I have spoken—the one class of persons out of the reach and out of the way altogether of the judgments that are coming, and the other class passing through those judgments which destroyed the great body of men, and thus escaping them. I have said that that class consists of the Jews and some Gentiles also, but I do not enter into details on that point at present—I wish now merely to present the general thought.

We saw last evening that the church forms the center of the heavenly glory—under Christ, of course, who is the center of everything—and that the Jews are the center of the earthly dominion, the earthly blessings. This is what gives their importance to the two points on which, if time allows, I shall dwell this evening—that is, the taking the saints in the last time to be with the Lord Himself in heaven, and there sharing His own glory and blessedness; and then the Jews brought into blessing with this earth, as reigned over by Christ, and not reigning with Him, but still a great nation on the earth. These two facts are the two great centers of God's ways.

In the chapter we have read you have first Christ Himself and the Church, figured in the man-child, and then in the woman which flees from persecution for 1260 days you have the Jewish remnant, those who are spared in the time of judgment but are not yet brought into glory. It thus brings before you the two subjects of which I have spoken; and I add this, that the consideration of the blessing of the Church will lead us necessarily to another point, and that is, that what is called a general resurrection, common to all together—and I state it now that we may get fast hold of the idea at once—is a thing entirely unknown to Scripture. I do not deny that it was the notion entertained among the Jews, at least by the Pharisees, that all Jews at all events (as for the Gentiles they looked upon them as dogs) would rise again together; but our Lord corrected this notion. A right conception on this point is necessarily connected with our understanding the taking up of the Church to heaven, because those saints who are dead must be raised for that. When I say “saints,” I mean all the saints, those of the Old Testament, as well as those under the New Testament, dispensation.

And I mention another point for those persons who are not familiar with these subjects, and that is, that God now is not dealing with this world-providentially of course He governs all—but that He is not dealing with this world as He afterward will, at this time while Christ is sitting at His right-hand in heaven, and while He is gathering the joint-heirs of Christ to reign with Him when He takes the inheritance. He alone knows at what moment that will be fulfilled, Then, when He hath put Christ's foes under His footstool, Christ will rise up from His Father's throne, and take His own throne. But, while Christ sits on His Father's throne, the Holy Ghost having been sent down, consequent on His ascension, He is gathering out of the world a people for His name, to be heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ.

This lapse of time, this parenthesis in the ways of God, is brought in, in the most distinct way, at the end of the ninth chapter of Daniel, and I refer to it because we should never understand God's dealings, with mankind, unless we get hold of this. At the end of the ninth of Daniel, you find the Spirit of God, showing a certain period which was to elapse before Jerusalem got its full blessing, and you will see the reference that is made to what I was calling the parenthesis or lapse of time, during which the Jews were all set aside. At the 24th verse it is said— “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people, and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy. Know, therefore, and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem, unto the Messiah the Prince, shall be seven weeks and threescore and two weeks; the street shall be built again, and the walls, even in troublous times.” That took place: you know it was forty and six years going on— “And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off” —the threescore and two weeks, with the other seven, making sixty-nine— “but not for himself,” or rather, instead of this, take what is in the margin, which is undoubtedly the true sense, “and shall have nothing.” He did not take the kingdom at all; He was cut off and got nothing; in heaven He got all the glory, but He got nothing as regards what we are speaking of. “And the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.” That is, what every one almost is familiar with, Titus coming and destroying the city, until there was not left one stone upon another, that was not thrown down.

But there is still a week left—we have only had sixty-nine weeks; and here, without entering into details, is the great principle I want you to get hold of. We have the sixty-nine weeks, and then there is a lapse. Messiah comes, is rejected, and is cut off, does not get the kingdom at all, gets nothing—He gets the cross it is true, but that is all He gets. He ascends to heaven, and therefore our hearts must follow Him up to heaven, while He is there. Then comes the time of the end.

“And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week.” For remark what was said before, “unto the end of the war desolations are determined.” As to the time all is left vague, these desolations are to go on for no one knows how long after the destruction of Jerusalem, the Messiah having gone and taken nothing. “And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week; and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abomination,” (that is idolatry, “abominations” means idolatry in the Old Testament) “he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.”

There then we get this simple but very important fact as to the interpretation of prophecy—that there was a term of seventy weeks, which would come upon the Holy City, upon the Gentiles too, but specially the Jews—until all prophecy was to be accomplished about them; but when the sixty-nine weeks had elapsed, Messiah comes, is cut off—that is actually fulfilled—and takes nothing; and there go on wars, &c., and the city is destroyed; and then there run on the times of the Gentiles, and blindness in part, according to chap. 11 of the Romans, as happened unto Israel, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

So again our Savior, in Luke's gospel, after speaking of the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, says that Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. Now that is what is still going on. Jerusalem is still trodden down. Christ has not taken to Him His great power and reign, spoken of in a chapter of the Revelation, preceding that which we have read. Jerusalem is still desolate, and the times of the Gentiles are still running on—I doubt not, running close unto their completion; but still running on; and Christ is sitting at the right hand of God the Father, according to that word, “Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thy foes thy footstool.” But while he sits there, the Holy Ghost comes down from heaven to declare that, if man had rejected Him, heaven had accepted Him, and that (redemption having been accomplished, and the grace appeared that bringeth salvation) He sits there to associate with Himself the joint-heirs of whom we have been speaking.

But in the meantime the Jews are set aside, and the times of the Gentiles are running on, and nothing is fulfilled, brought to an accomplishment, because what He is doing is gathering the heavenly saints. Now those heavenly saints, as we saw in the last lecture, are completely identified with Christ Himself. He is not ashamed to call them brethren. He is the first-born among many brethren who have been conformed to the image of God's Son, and are “members of His body, of his flesh, and of His bones.” For it is said, “no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church, for we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.” And the saints, too, are the bride of Christ. What Eve was to Adam, that is the place the Church of God fills in reference to Christ. And what he is doing now is gathering the saints to fill this place. It is not the fulfilling of God's dealings with the earth, but the gathering of saints for heaven; and, while he is gathering saints for heaven, Christ sits at his right hand until His enemies be made His footstool. As the apostle expresses it in the 2nd chapter of the Hebrews, referring to the 8th Psalm, “but now we see not yet all things put under Him; but we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor.”

There is an extremely beautiful thought connected with this, which we cannot dwell on now, and that is, that if you look for the church in the Old Testament, you can only find Christ, but when you find the blessedness and glory which belongs to Christ, the Church is the sharer of it. So that what we have to see, in connection with the fulfillment of the prophecies of God, is, that previous to this the church is to be taken out of the scene altogether, because he cannot begin these dealings with the Gentiles in the last week, until the gathering of the saints to be heirs with Christ is over. Until He has got the heirs, Christ cannot take the inheritance; and, therefore, all the dealings of God—or of Christ, if you please, who is the power of God—all these dealings of God with the world—we do not speak of his providence, of course, for not a sparrow falleth to the ground without Him—but all the direct dealings of God with the world through the Jews are suspended until the Church is taken up.

But you never find in prophecy, until the end of Revelation—you never find the Church revealed in prophecy, except in connection with Christ. I may give you some instances of this. For example, I have no doubt that the “man child” spoken of in the chapter that we have been reading, includes the Church as well as Christ. But it is Christ that is principally meant, for the Church would be nothing without Christ, it would be a body without a head. It is Christ who has been caught up, but the Church is included; for whenever He begins to act publicly (even as regards Satan being cast down), He must have His body, His bride with Him; He must have His brethren, His joint-heirs. If you examine what we find here, you will see that the Church is certainly included. You read— “And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron; and her child was caught up unto God and to his throne.” The man child is to rule all nations with a rod of iron, but there is an interruption. And as we have seen that Christ came to this earth, was cut off, and took nothing, we get the other side of the picture here. He takes nothing, but is caught up to God and His throne, and sits at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens.

This sitting at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens, belongs personally to Christ, but when it comes to ruling the nations with a rod of iron, the saints are associated with Him. The quotation is from the second Psalm, where it is said, “Ask of me, and I shall give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession: Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.” That is not asked yet. And He has prayed for the saints, not for the world— “I pray for them; I pray not for the world, but for them which Thou hast given Me.” He only intercedes for the world, when He asks for dominion over them, and of course it will be given Him—it is in God's counsels that it will; and He will take judgment in hand, the rod of iron. But then the saints will judge the world too; that is positively revealed— “Know ye not that we shall judge angels? Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? “And not only is this stated in the general, but in the detail, especially as to the rod of iron. At the end of chapter 2, of Revelation, you will find that this is given to the Church, exactly as it is given to Christ—He that overcometh, and keepeth my words unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations; and he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers; even as I have received of My Father.” And the same thing is said in chapter 7 of Daniel, “Until the Ancient of Days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the Most High,” —the saints who will be in the heavenly places with Christ, when Christ comes—the “rod of iron” being there spoken of as “judgment.” That is not the most blessed part, the blessed part is to be with Him; but it is true, and it is part of what we have to look to. And co in chapter 20 of Revelation, where this time is spoken of— “And I saw thrones, and the sitters on them, and judgment was given unto them.”

How sadly has the sense of this blessedness and glory of the saints been lost! I was speaking of it on the last occasion—their identification with Christ, their being joint-heirs, members of His body, His bride. The sense of all this has dropped away from the Church. It is common to say that it is enough to lie at the foot of the Cross. Now to me it is a blessed thing to see a person coming to the foot of the Cross; but it is dreadful to stay there, because for a person to do so is the same as saying that he does not own that the whole thing is accomplished. It is a want of boldness “to enter into the holiest, through the veil, that is to say, Christ's flesh.” It is the same as saying that he is unfit to pass through the rent veil to be a priest in the holy place, He says, “No; I must stay outside.” I say that is a very wretched condition to be in. He must come to the Cross in order to get in; that is perfectly true; and it is blessed to see a person who has been careless so coming; he can never get in any other way. But always to stay outside—always to say, “I am staying at the foot of the Cross, and do not know whether I have the right to enter in or not;” that is a great mistake, If you say you cannot tell whether you are redeemed or not, how then can you call yourself a Christian? Christians are redeemed, of course. Why then do you take the name of Christians, and yet remain unable to say whether you are redeemed?

In this chapter of Revelation which we have read, you have it positively revealed that it is finished with the saints, as regards all their trials and all their accusations, before the time that the trial of the Jewish people begins in the last half-week of Daniel. In the first six verses of the chapter, you have the statement of those who are concerned in these last days. First, you have the “woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.” This, I have no doubt, is the Jewish people, nothing else-because Christ is not born of the Church, but looked at as reigning and glorious in the world, was born of the Jews, “of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came.” There is no kind of sense in the idea of Christ's being born of the church. Being “clothed with the sun,” is being clothed with supreme authority. She has the moon—all her previous reflected state—under her feet. “And upon her head a crown of twelve stars.” Twelve is the number always used to indicate power—the power of God's administration among men. You have the twelve apostles sitting on twelve thrones—the city built on twelve foundations, and having twelve gates, &c. —the number being used to express administrative power—God's administrative power over man. Well, Christ was to be born. “And she being with child, cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.” And so the Jews say, in the ninth of Isaiah, “To us a son is born.” The church cannot say that at all. We can say that we believe He is the Son of God; but we do not say He is born to us. As concerning the flesh, He was born into. Israel.

Then you come to the opposing power—the power of Satan—exercised through the Roman Empire. “And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth; and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.” That is the power of Satan resisting Christ, and seeking to put an end to His power. He could not, of course, but he seemed to have done it for a while.

“And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron” —clearly Christ— “and her child was caught up unto God, and to His throne.” He did not take the power—He took nothing, but was caught up to God.

Then, having seen who are the persons engaged, you get the woman's place— “And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand, two hundred and three-score days.” You will see now the reason why I referred to the gap, with regard to all God's dealings with the world, which there always is in prophecy—without, however, giving any dates at all—between the time that Christ is taken up, and the time that the church is taken up; and they are both united together. As I have said, it is not merely a notion of men, but it is positively revealed as God's own order in the ninth of Daniel, “that Messiah was to be revealed and cut off and take nothing; that blindness in part happens to Israel till the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled; and that then the Jews would be brought to repentance, as Jesus Christ says in the Gospel of Matthew, “Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.”

Thus we get the Church, united with Christ, taken up to God, and the woman fled into the wilderness. Now we come to the progress of events, not as regards the church at all, but as regards Israel and the world. “And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.” The whole power of Satan will then be cast out. That is in direct contrast with the result of the church's warfare, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” This is the conflict we have to wage as to our title to sit in heavenly places with Christ; and the result of this spiritual conflict is, that the power of Satan is cast out. In the prophecy we are considering this is all over, and you see the joy there is in consequence among the dwellers in heaven, the heavenly saints.

“And the great dragon was cast out—that old serpent called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world; he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ, for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea.”

We find here, that while all the heavenly people, that is, the Church of God (because our conversation is in heaven and we are one with Christ in heaven) are called upon to rejoice that the accurse of the brethren is cast down—that they have overcome him—at this very moment when these heavenly saints have overcome, it is just the time when Satan comes down to earth, having great wrath, knowing that he has but a short time. Thus we get entire rejoicing in what is heavenly, and at the same time most desperate woe in what is earthly. This makes the contrast very distinct and definite between these heavenly ones and the dwellers on earth, who, all through the Revelation, are contrasted with those persons who are heirs of heaven, whose citizenship is in heaven.

“Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time. And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child.” We see here very clearly that by the woman it is not the Church of God that is meant, because the Church of God is called upon to rejoice on account of all their afflictions being over, and the accusations against them past. They are called upon to rejoice because they have overcome the accuser by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony. But this woman is in a different position, all the rage of Satan being now directed against her. The Church of God has been taken out of the way, and Satan has another object for his great wrath, namely, the Jewish people. This is for them the time of great tribulation that is elsewhere spoken of Christ said to the Jews, “I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not; if another shall come in his own name, him ye shall receive.” If they would not take the true Christ, they must have a false Christ.

I have read this chapter of the Revelation, in order to show that while one class of persons—those associated with Christ—are caught up to God, and there is triumph and rejoicing and gladness amongst them when Satan is cast down, that is the very time when tribulation begins on the earth. “And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child. And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent.” There in the wilderness, in this time of tribulation, God takes care of her. She makes her escape from the tribulation, the figure being employed that she receives this great power of flight, as if the wings of an eagle; and God secures her, not as He did Abraham, who saw the destruction of Sodom from the top of the mount, but as He secured Lot, who was saved by flight. The people in heaven rejoicing are like Abraham on the top of the mount; while the woman upon the earth is like Lot, saved by God giving her the great wings of an eagle to escape, while all this great rage and power of Satan is being displayed. “And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood, after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood. And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth.” That is, providential means were used for the purpose of saving the Jews from the violent assaults made upon them. “And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.” I shall now refer to a more literal prophecy, which will help us to understand this same interval, these times of the Gentiles, so far as they are going on now—because I have no doubt that they began in the days of Nebuchadnezzar. Turn to chap. 8 of Isaiah, where, after the circumstances of the moment having been spoken of as leading to it, it is said, “Sanctify the Lord of Hosts himself” —a blessed testimony to the divinity of the Lord Jesus as Jehovah” and let Him be your fear, and let Him be your dread. And He shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of stumbling, and for a rock of offense, to both the houses of Israel; for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many among them shall stumble and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken.” The Lord, you know, spoke of His being a stumbling-stone, and said that whosoever should fall on that stone should be broken. “Bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples. And I will wait upon the Lord that hideth his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for Him. Behold I and the children whom God hath given me.” This, you remember, is quoted in the second of Hebrews. Although God is hiding His face from the house of Jacob, Christ says, “I will wait upon the Lord;” or, as the Septuagint has it, “I have put my trust in the Lord.” And again— “Behold I and the children whom the Lord hath given me.” These are the disciples of Christ in all ages.

And then, in the ninth chapter, you have the close of all that— “For thou hast broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the days of Midian. For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood; but this shall be with burning and fuel of fire. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty, God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and Peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon His kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice, from henceforth, even forever.”

Here, then, we have the fact of Christ's coming and being a stone of stumbling, and He says, “I will wait upon the Lord that hideth his face from the house of Jacob.” Then follows a period of dreadful sorrow for Israel— “They shall look unto the earth, and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish; and they shall be driven to darkness.” And then comes—what? A dreadful battle; only it has the fire of God's judgment in it— “this shall be with burning and fuel of fire” —which is a figure of God's judgment. And then it is said, “Unto us a child is born.” Christ is this child that was born; but when he comes back, it shall be said of Him, as in Isa. 53, “we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.”

What I refer to the passage now for, is the revelation it gives of the same fact of Christ's coming and being rejected, His waiting upon the Lord that hides His face from the house of Jacob—and of the fact that at last He goes forth in glorious power, in this terrible battle of God's judgment — “in righteousness doth He judge and make war.” And then it is said—unto us a child is born, the Wonderful, the Counselor, the Mighty God, and the like, and He sits upon the throne of David to give peace upon the earth. All this comes after the time that He had been waiting. His waiting was consequent on His rejection, while God was hiding His face from the house of Jacob, as He is doing now. But that is not forever. I refer to it, that if possible. our souls may get hold of the ways of God, the framework as it were, of his plan: that is, that Christ comes, is rejected, and is caught up to God; and then He sits on His Father's throne, but He does not yet take to Him His great power and reign. Meanwhile the times of the Gentiles are running on. God hath hidden His face from the house of Jacob, and Jerusalem is trodden down of the Gentiles till the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. And, while that is going on, while there is that parenthesis in God's ways as regards the government of the world, Christ, having sent down the Holy Ghost, is gathering His joint-heirs to be associated with Him when He does take His great power.

Now let us turn to the accomplishment of this, as regards the Church, that is, its being taken up to be associated with Christ, and then, if time permits, we shall turn to the other part, the accomplishment as regards the Jews. My object will be to show that the resurrection of the saints is a thing in nature, time, and character, entirely apart from, and (except in the fact of its being a resurrection) in every particular the opposite of the resurrection of the wicked—that the resurrection of the saints is a special favor of God, such as was manifested in Christ's own resurrection, because they are saved already, because they have got eternal life, because they are the delight of God, not as they are in themselves, but as they are in Christ-that they are taken up and dealt with apart by themselves, as not belonging to this world's government, except in so far as they are kings of it; whereas the wicked (while it is quite true that they are raised, for Christ will raise everybody)” are raised, however, not because they are the delight of God, but because the contrary is the case—not because they have life in Christ, for they have not—but they are raised for judgment, which is nothing but condemnation. This is another part of the subject, and a very solemn part of it, which I cannot dwell upon now, that the judgment of the nations and of the earth is for condemnation.

I purpose now to go through all the passages which speak of the resurrection, and to show you that the resurrection of the saints is an entirely distinct thing in nature, time, character, and everything else—that it is the consequence of redemption so that now we can look for it, because we are saved—that it will happen when Christ comes, whereas, when the wicked are raised, Christ will not come at all, but that when He comes He will raise the saints and the saints only to be with Him in blessedness and glory. Mark, beloved friends, how solemn and practical this is for all of us—that the distinction is so clearly made, that, where the life of Christ is, where we have a part in the redemption of Christ, when Christ comes, He will take us up into glory with Himself—that we who are redeemed and have eternal life shall appear with Him in glory; whereas, where there is not repentance and a receiving of Christ into the heart, this will not be the case, but when the time comes, those who are in that condition will he raised solely for judgment, and that while all are to appear before Christ, wherever a person has to do with judgment, he is infallibly condemned.

Hence you find the words which are familiar to all of you— “Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord, for in thy sight shall no flesh living be justified.” Beloved friends, you can feel how important this is. It applies the subject we are now considering directly to the state of our souls. There is no judgment without condemnation. No man with whom God enters into judgment can he saved, for sentence has been pronounced already as plainly as God can pronounce it— “There is none righteous, no, not one.” I do not know what the great white throne can say plainer than that. Such is the declaration which is brought home to our hearts; but, before the day of judgment which shall execute the wrath, the wrath to come, Christ comes to deliver us from it and wherever He is received into the heart, we are delivered from it and are placed with Himself—He is our righteousness, our life, everything.

Before referring to the passages which speak of the resurrection, I will only add in passing that in the very nature of things the judgment of God can never be anything else than condemnation—I speak of the judgment upon men, not the rebel angels, although it is true of them also. We have made a judge of God—and how? By sin. God could not judge Adam, if he remained as God created him—for if He judged the things that He created He would be judging Himself. He could not judge him unless he sinned. Suppose I made this desk, and I began to judge it, I should be judging myself, the workman who made it. God made Adam such as he was, and saw him to be very good, and while Adam remained such, God could not judge him. What brought him into judgment was that Adam left God, listened to the devil, and turn to sin. What then can judgment be but condemnation? God may save us out of it through Christ—that is another thing; but our prayer must be, Enter not into judgment with us, for there is none righteous, no, not one.

Now the resurrection of the saints is the fruit and final power of Christ's deliverance, whereas the other resurrection is the righteous execution of judgment against those who have hardened their necks against God's mercy in Christ, treasuring up unto themselves wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. First, then, as to the nature and character of the resurrection of the saints, turn to Rom. 8:11— “If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you.” That is, if you are Christians (for if any man has not the spirit of Christ, he is none of His), “He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you.” That is not true of the wicked. The reasons why they and we, if we are saints, are raised, are totally different; for we are raised in virtue of the Holy Ghost dwelling in us—that is, because we are saved and sealed by the spirit of God already. There, then, we get the principle.

Now turn to John 5 and see how strongly it brings this out. It says nothing as to time, which is comparatively immaterial; but it is a most solemn and instructive passage with regard to the point we are considering. Christ says at the 21St verse— “For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; so the Son quickeneth whom he will. For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son.” They both quicken; but the Father does not judge: all judgment is committed to the Son, “That all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father” —even the wicked themselves, they cannot help doing so— “He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father which hath sent him. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth in Him that sent me, hath everlasting life.” You see that, after He had said the Father and Son quicken, but judgment is given to the Son, He puts it to us which we are to have. Am I to be the subject of judgment. That is what He is asking us here.

“He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life” (it is given to him) “and shall not come into condemnation” (the same word in the Greek as stands for judgment) “but is passed from death unto life.” Christ has exercised His life-giving power, and is not going to deny it, by bringing into judgment those upon whom it has been exercised. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live” —by which, no doubt, is meant spiritual quickening— “For as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself; and hath given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of man. Marvel not at this; for the hour is coming, in which all that are in their graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth, they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” — which is the same word (“judgment”) again.

I do not want to insist on the word damnation; it is damnation no doubt, but I do not insist upon that word, because the point all through is that it is “judgment” —it is a resurrection of life, and a resurrection of judgment. How far they may be apart is another point, which has nothing to do with this fact, that there is a resurrection of life, and a resurrection of judgment. Where there has been spiritual quickening, where they have everlasting life, they shall not come into judgment, but have passed from death unto life; but then, if dead as to their bodies, they must be raised up to make that life complete, because they must have bodies in unison and in harmony with the state into which they enter; and on the other hand, they that have clone evil shall come forth unto the resurrection of judgment.

It is said, “The hour is coming, in the which,” &c., but this is really nothing as to the two things being at the same time. It is no more than if I were to say, “the hour of Napoleon's greatness,” meaning the period during which he was great, as contrasted with the period of his fall and littleness. So here, when it is said— “the hour is coming and now is” —we know that it has already lasted, since Christ spoke of it, for more than eighteen hundred years. The real intention of the expression is to contrast the time of Christ's life with the time since; it is the same as saying there is a time for quickening and a time for judgment, and therefore a time for raising up. Here, then, are two distinct characters of Christ's power—His giving life, and His executing judgment; those to whom life is given, gracious, spiritual life, have part in the resurrection of life; those to whom it is not given, have part in the resurrection of judgment or condemnation.

You thus have the great principle that is involved, and I now turn to other passages which illustrate other parts of the subject. In the 20 of Luke, the Sadducees put the case that, according to the law of Moses, if a man, having a wife, died without children, his brother should take the wife, and they supposed the case of seven brethren marrying her, and asked whose wife should she be in the resurrection. It was a quibble they raised, tempting the Lord, and Jesus answered them, “The children of this world marry and are given in marriage. But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, &c.” Now what is the meaning of this?— “Accounted worthy to obtain the resurrection from the dead.” You see it is accounted a special favor. If you only get the resurrection from the dead, you will be “equal unto the angels.” It cannot be meant that, if people are raised to be condemned, they are equal to the angels. But it is said—if you get the resurrection, you will be equal to the angels, “And are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.” It is quite impossible that that can be said of those who are raised only to condemnation.

If you turn again to Chap. 15 of 1 Corinthians, you will find that nothing can be more plainly set forth than this is. At verse 22nd, it is said, “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order.” Then we get the order of the resurrection, and that is just what we want. Let us see then if it is to be common thing, in which all classes are to go up together. “Every man in his own order; Christ the first fruits; afterward they that are Christ's at His coming.” Nothing can be more plain. “Then cometh the end.” There cometh another time when others shall be raised, but it is they who are Christ's at his coming.

And what I affirm is, that not merely can this be proved from Scripture, but that there never is the slightest appearance of anything else—that this fact I am speaking about is linked up with the very foundation truths of redemption. Many have redemption who do not see it—I admit that fully; but nevertheless it is the effect of redemption, and you can see the light that is thus thrown on the fact of my not coming into judgment, because I have passed from death unto life, as stated in John 5 and what the Church has lost, by losing sight of that Again in Phil. 3 the apostle speaks of it as his own hope, “And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith, that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection,” —that is a present thing, you see— “And the fellowship of His sufferings being made conformable unto his death; if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.” Now what is it to which so much importance is attached, that the apostle desires to be made like Christ, if by any means he may attain something very special, the resurrection of the dead? When the apostle uses such language, it is possible that all, both the wicked and the righteous, should be jostled up together in the resurrection, leaving it to be found out afterward which are the righteous and which are the wicked? The truth is, it is a new word which the apostle invented, which is not found in classical Greek, to express a being raised up from among the dead, on purpose to distinguish from the raising of the wicked the raising of the saints from out or among the dead.

I do not like to deal in critical points, but the fact is that in a number of passages the power is lost, because the word is translated “resurrection of the dead,” instead of “resurrection from among the dead.” That was the character of Christ's resurrection, when He was declared to be the Son of God with power by being raised from among the dead. And we will be like Christ in that He will raise us up from among the dead, because we have got the Spirit of Christ, and life from Christ.

The reason why I dwell on this is because it goes right to the root of the question of our redemption. Nothing can be so absurd—forgive me for saying so—than the idea of what is called the general judgment. Not that we shall not all appear before Christ—this of course is true. Take Paul himself. He has been in heaven one thousand eight hundred years, absent from the body and present with the Lord—are you going to judge him after that? He is in heaven because he was entitled to go there; and to speak of judgment after that is absurd on the face of it. To do so only shows that the Church of God, even true saints, have lost the sense of being redeemed already. If Christ's dying has put away my sins, and given me a place with Himself; if, having received the Holy Ghost, I am joined to the Lord as one spirit, am I, thus joined to Christ, still to be judged? To say so to forget the true place which we hold.

I turn now to the proof of this, Look back for a moment to Corinthians 15 where, having got the order, to show further how entirely and distinctly it is saints and none else who are raised, we find— “So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory.” How can you apply that to a general resurrection; “Raised in glory” —can you apply that to the wicked? It is impossible to read one sentence about the resurrection, without seeing not that the others will not be raised, but that it is distinctly and definitely the resurrection of the saints that is spoken of, because they are redeemed and have life in Christ.

Take again 1 Thess. 4 which we quoted another evening with reference to the Lord's coming, and now with reference to which we have already seen, that it is “they who are Christ's, at His coming.” At verse 16th it is said— “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first” —and no one else.

This is the plain language uniformly held. It is indeed the capital truth of the New Testament, that as Christ by being raised from the dead was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, so we through grace are, not like Christ in person but by being adopted—also declared to be the sons of God, by attaining the resurrection, when the time comes, of the body.

The only point that I refer to the Revelation for is, that there will be a thousand years between the two resurrections. But, whether it be a thousand years or thousand days, the point which I feel it to be important to insist upon, is that they are two totally distinct things—that the resurrection of the saints is God's taking those He delights in, who are already redeemed and quickened by the Spirit, because His Spirit dwells in them, His taking them to be with Christ in glory; whereas the other, whether a thousand days or a thousand years after, is the resurrection to judgment quite a different thing.

There is one passage more I will refer you to, in order to show how the same truth is every where affirmed, to John 14— “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also.” That is the way in which Christ takes us up. He will take us up to be with Himself, at His coming. He comes again, and receives us to Himself, that where He is, there we may be also.

There is one passage which people quote to prove the erroneous notion about a general resurrection. They cannot apply to that purpose any of the passages which speak of the resurrection; but they quote Matt. 25 where the division between the sheep and the goats is spoken of. Now there is not a single syllable there about the resurrection. In chapter 24 our Lord has been speaking of the dealings with the Jewish people until Christ comes. Afterward in three parables be describes His dealings with the saints; and then lastly He describes His dealings with the nations, and then He speaks of the time when He comes in. His glory to sit upon the throne of His glory, and to gather all nations—the Gentiles, if you please, for it is the same word—before Him to judge them. And this is the judgment, whose existence people have strangely forgotten—that there is a judgment of the quick as well as of the dead—a judgment of the living, and a terrible judgment it is too.

I now refer to the passage which speaks of the thousand years. I went over the other passage first, because people are apt to think that this “first resurrection” is merely the explanation of some symbolical ideas which we found in the Revelation; but, as I have shown you, there is no passage in Scripture referring to the resurrection, which does not show that there is a first resurrection of the saints. Turn then now to the 20th of Revelation.

But remark that in preceding chapters you find that Babylon has been destroyed—she in whom “was found the blood of prophets and of saints.” Then you have the judgment of the wicked on the earth, which I do enter into now, and then the marriage of the saints and the Lamb, and their coming with Him when He comes to destroy the beast. “The armies which were in heaven followed Him.” Whenever Christ comes, His heavenly saints will come along with Him, as it is said, “the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with thee,” and the Lord cometh with ten thousand of His saints, and “when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, we also shall appear with Him in glory.” Here, in Revelation, they are seen in figurative language, coming forth, clothed in white garments, which is the righteousness of the saints I refer to this merely to show the place they hold. Then Christ comes forth as King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, with His saints, and the beast and false prophet are taken and destroyed.

Then Satan is bound, and then John says— “I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them; witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.” There we find the saints, those to whom judgment is given, and not only so, but who execute judgment, sitting on thrones, and reigning with Christ a thousand years— “but the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished; this is the first resurrection.” Mark how the whole statement shows the perfect absurdity—and it is a sad and solemn thing, the influence which this delusion exercises on people's minds—the perfect absurdity of what is called the spiritual millennium. Not that the Holy Ghost will not be there, for He will; but you see now, before all this, the marriage of the Lamb is come with the Church, the bride of Christ; the whole as regards the Church is complete, and Christ comes forth to execute judgment on the beast and the false prophet, accompanied by the armies of the saints, the bride having made herself ready, and the marriage of the Lamb having taken place before that.

And yet people are looking for the millennium as a state of the Church down here! I admit that it is presented in a figure, but this is certain, that if the bride is gone up, and the marriage of the Lamb has come, it is not the state of the Church down here that is meant. For we read also that Satan is to be bound then, whereas the character given to us while down here is that we are to overcome Satan. “Satan will be bruised under your feet shortly.” Our place here is that we have to wrestle, not with flesh and blood, but with spiritual wickedness in heavenly places; whereas when the Lamb comes out with His saints, Satan is bound, and then begins the period of a thousand years.

I wish to refer to you the connection of the passage in 1 Cor. 15 with Isa. 25, because the connection of these two things—the resurrection of the saints, and the restoration of Israel—will thereby be strongly brought out. The apostle says that “when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory.” If you turn to Isa. 25, you will see that this takes place at the time which we call the millennium, when the Jews being restored to their place on the earth, there is that era of blessedness among the nations which is commonly called the millennium. It is there said— “Thou shalt bring down the noise of strangers, as the heat in a dry place; even the heat with the shadow of a cloud; the branch of the terrible ones shall be brought low. And in this mountain shall the Lord of Hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. And He will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory.” That is at the time the resurrection takes place, for it is said in Corinthians, “Then shall come to pass the saying which is written, death is swallowed up in victory.” And thus it appears that the time when the resurrection takes place is the time when the Lord restores Israel, when He establishes Israel's place in Zion, and takes away the vail from off the face of all nations.

It is said— “Behold, is it not of the Lord of hosts that the people shall labor in the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity? For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” This is the condition of the earth when this time of which I am speaking comes— “They shall labor in the very fire and shall weary themselves for very vanity.” Again it is said—let favor be showed to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness; in the land of uprightness will he deal unjustly, and will not behold the Majesty of the Lord. Lord, when thy hand is lifted up, they will not see, but they shall see, and be ashamed for their envy at the people; yea, the fire of thine enemies shall devour them.” We thus see that, though favor is shown to the wicked, they will not learn righteousness—But “When thy judgments are abroad on the earth, then the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.”

I am adding these few texts to show that the millennium is not spiritual, in the sense in which it is often understood. Whenever God speaks of the earth being full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, and the like, it is always in connection with judgment. You find this in Numbers, when God said He would destroy Israel, that in connection with that it is written, “All the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord,” and you find the same things in the passage from Habakkuk, which I have quoted. You never find the idea presented of the gospel going forth and bringing all nations under its influence. In Rom. 11 The apostle puts it in this way, “For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should a wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved.” That is, he treats that expectation of the Church not being cut off, as being wise in their own conceit.

Again, in another passage it is declared that what gathers together to battle the kings of the earth and of the whole world, will be three unclean spirits that come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. I do not now go into the details of that, but this must be evident to you that, when it is stated that these three unclean spirits go forth to gather the earth and the whole world to the battle of that great day of God Almighty, it cannot be the gathering of the saints that is spoken of—it is a gathering of the powers of Satan.

I have now gone through all the passages in the New Testament, which, so far as I am aware, speak of the resurrection; and I think it must be as plain to you, as anything could possibly be, that all those passages show very distinctly that the resurrection of the saints is an entirely distinct thing from the resurrection of the wicked, being founded on their redemption and their having received life from Christ, the power of which is shown by the resurrection of their bodies; that that resurrection of life is definitely distinguished from the resurrection of judgment by a thousand years elapsing between the two; and that, while the first is the fruit of redemption, the other is the fruit of the rejection of redemption.

Time will not allow me to enter on the subject of the restoration of the Jews. But let me just return, in a few words of application, to these solemn truths, that, before judgment comes, Christ has come to save that, if He enters into judgment, nobody could be saved; that, whenever He enters into judgment, no flesh living can be justified, because there is none righteous, no, not one; but that, because this is true, the Lord has sent a perfect salvation in order that we might escape the judgment, a salvation that delivers us from the wrath to come; that there is wrath coming, but that there is deliverance from it; and that when God interferes in this way to deliver us from that wrath to come, He does not merely save us from wrath, but gives us a place with His own Son. Thus not merely are our sins forgiven, but we are united to Christ by the one Spirit, Christ being the first born among many brethren, who are the members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones, so that He nourisheth the Church as a man nourisheth and cherisheth his own flesh, and prays, “Father I will that they also whom Thou hast given me, be with me where I am,” so that when he appears, we also shall appear with Him; and if He is the judge, the saints too shall sit with Him on thrones, and judgment shall be given to them; for, says the apostle, “Know ye not that the saints shall judge the world!”

Now is that the thought, beloved friends, which you have of redemption? Have your souls believed that this world is a condemned world? I know that the world will not bear this, but it must bear, when it rises to judgment to hear that it is a condemned world. Individual souls are tried, but it is not true that the world is in a state of probation. Christ came to seek and to save that which is lost, and a man that is lost is not in a state of probation. When we are judged, we are judged of the Lord that we should not be condemned with the world. That is all a settled thing with the word.

How do your hearts take this up that all this busy scene which you live in the midst of, is a condemned world, that this is the world which said, “This is the heir, come, let us kill him” —that this world has rejected Christ, and that Christ has said, “now is the judgment of this world.” He says, “The world seeth me no more;” and “when the Comforter is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment—of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more.”

But, because the world is thus condemned, there is offered to us redemption, a new life, a second Adam instead of the first, and all the promises of God are in Him. There are no promises to men; but all the promises of God are in Him, Yea, and in Him, Amen. When Adam sinned, the promise was not given to Adam—there was no promise given to Adam—it was to the Seed of the woman, that the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. That is, the promise was given to the second Adam, not to the first. And, then, in Christ we have not merely forgiveness, but glory. We are one with Christ, the bride of Christ, and have our place, not according to the demerits of the first Adam, but according to the merits of the second Adam. Do you take hold of that blessed truth? The Lord give you to feel more deeply than you have ever felt before what it is to be in a world which has rejected the Lord, and then to know, with joyful hearts, that you yourselves have bowed and received Him as your Savior, who in unspeakable love suffered and died for us.

Review of Dr. Brown: 1. How the Millennium Is Brought About

When God was converting souls as He never did for extent in real quickening power, either before or since, the apostolic preacher told his hearers to repent and be converted, that their sins might be blotted out, so that seasons of refreshing might come from the face of the Lord, and He might send Christ Jesus that was fore-appointed to them, whom heaven must receive till the times of restoring all things, of which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets since time began (Acts 3). This is plain and conclusive.

It is impossible more definitely to connect the sending of Jesus from heaven, not with the destruction, but with the restoration of all things—the subject of the bright visions of the prophets, in contradistinction to the work of the gospel. The ungrieved power of the Spirit was the operating largely and profoundly; but this had for its effect on Peter's mind to urge repentance on Israel, that so might come from Jehovah's face that which really brings about the millennium. There is no thought of a “continued effusion of the Spirit,” still less of a professing world, as the adequate answer. It is that which is elsewhere styled “the regeneration” (Matt. 19), when the Son of man shall sit (not on the Father's throne as now, Rev. 3, but) on the throne of His glory; and His once suffering apostles shall sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve thrones of Israel. If no such state of things consists with this age, or with eternity, when can it be save in the millennium? Manifestly, therefore, that good age which succeeds “the present evil age,” and which precedes eternity when national distinctions shall have forever passed away, supposes the Son of Man to come again and to reign over the world.

Thus the nobleman, according to the parable, will have returned, having received the kingdom; and the kingdom He delivers up to Him who is God and Father at “the end,” not of this age, but of the age to come—i.e., the millennium, when He shall have put down all rule and authority and power; for He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. This is not what occupies Christ now. He is calling out those who were enemies, and gaining them as His friends, yea, His body and bride, to reign with Him when the world-kingdom of the Lord and of His Christ is come (Rev. 11). He is not in this age dealing righteously but in long suffering with His enemies; in that age He shall put them under His feet, not ill title only, but in fact. And when all things shall be subdued unto Him (which will be the work and issue of the millennium, not of this age), then shall the Son also Himself be subject to Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28). This is disclosed in Rev. 21:1-8; not in what goes before or after.

The common post-millennial system of Christendom ignores and opposes all this clear, positive teaching of Scripture, It is in effect a denial of the Bible millennium altogether. Dr. B.'s view, even if true, would make it simply an extension of what is going on now throughout the world. He excludes Christ, he includes Satan, he maintains the mixture of tares with wheat in his scheme. Thus it is not a new age but the last stage of this present evil age, conceived to be an exceptional period which shall surpass in brightness all the world has yet beheld. It is a visionary millennium of man without a shred of divine evidence, nay, in hopeless antagonism to the word of God. The root of it is unbelief as to the central place of Christ in the ways of God, and the substitution for Him of salvation or the saved. Hence, habitually all is viewed from present experience, and tends to magnify man as he is or hopes to be — not the Lord. Instead of calling the Christian to self-judgment, because of our miserable fall from primitive power, purity, and love, this scheme directly fosters the proudest and wholly baseless hope of doing that by the gospel which God receives for Christ sent from heaven in judgment of the world and especially of Christendom. “When Thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.” It is perfectly true that the earth in the millennium is to be the scene of universal blessing; it is utterly false that this is ever once attributed in Scripture to a preached gospel. The delusion would not stand an hour's examination of Scripture, if it did not flatter man to the dishonor of Christ — the common source of all error even among children of God. And what (can the reader believe it?) is the Scripture, the one Scripture adduced to support the scheme? “All power,” &c., Matt. 28:18-20. The late Cardinal Wiseman, like many a Romish controversialist before him, cited the same passage with quite as much reason to support the fabric of Papal infallibility. It need hardly be said that there is not a syllable which supports either the claims of the Pope, invested with all power in heaven and on earth, or the hopes of missionary societies. The Lord pledges His presence with His servants in their making disciples of all the Gentiles; but far from hinting at the conversion of the world in the age to come as the effect of their work, He expressly speaks of being with them all the days until the completion of the age. He himself would come in power and glory for that age, using His angels to clear out of His kingdom all offenses and those that practice lawlessness; and then should the righteous shine in their heavenly sphere, as He had taught them already according to a previous chapter of this gospel, which explicitly shows us the separating judgment that will distinguish the end of this age, and thus prepare the way for the peculiar features of the age to come, that follows before the eternal state.

Review of Dr. Brown: 2. Nature of the Millennium.

The remarks already made on the parable of the tares preclude the need of much argument here. Only, it is an exaggeration and mistake if people have taught such that the millennium is a perfect state, or that there can be such till eternity. Isa. 65 is clear that sin and death are still possible within its course; and Rev. 20:7-10 demonstrates, that after its expiration there will be a vast muster of the distant nations, Gog and Magog, under the guidance of Satan, once more deceiving men. These have been all born within the thousand years, and may have rendered a feigned obedience throughout; but not being renewed, they fall under Satan's snares as soon as he is loosed and goes out to deceive them. The reign of the Lord in visible glory over the earth will not change the heart nor deliver from temptation when the enemy appears.

But this has nothing in common with the wheat field, among which tares were sown. Tares do not mean men as merely evil by nature, but the result of Satan's special sowing in Christendom—heretics and other corrupt persons mingled with the confessors of Christ. In that field the servants are forbidden to take in hand the extermination of the tares from among the wheat. Care for the true, not judgment of the false, is their business. Others—the angels—will deal with the children of the wicked one in the time of harvest (i.e., in the completion of the age). Patient grace becomes the servants, not earthly judgment, which in their hands might work, as indeed it always has wrought, mischief to the children of the kingdom.

At the present there reigns grace; in the millennium righteousness will reign; in eternity righteousness will dwell. The thousand years will not be without evil, but the earth will be happy and perfectly governed, till Satan, during the short space that succeeds, is allowed to marshal the distant nations against the camp of the saints and the beloved city (earthly Jerusalem); but those nations who fall under Satan's last deceit are never called “tares.” They were no produce of Satan's seed, for they existed in an unregenerate state before he was let loose. It is not the fact that any intelligent premillenialists describes the millennium “just as other people do” (p. 310); for post-millennialism by extending such a parable as that of the tares to that day, simply destroys the millennium. The clearance of tares from the kingdom of the Son of man will not hinder the birth of men throughout the thousand years, multitudes of whom will be unrenewed, and thus exposed to the enemy at the close. The popular system is infidelity as to the millennium; it denies the introduction of a new age after this age, and the co-existence and display of the kingdom of God in both its parts—heavenly and earthly. The end of the age is not the end of the world, but the completion of the present course of time, when, the Lord will not have His servants exercise judgment by rooting the evil out of the field. In the end, judgment will be applied to purge out all scandals for the reign of Christ and those who are glorified along with Him. The making disciples of all nations cannot contradict the Lord's word, that the gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations. It is the grossest begging of the question to say there is no millennium to come after this. Preaching for a witness suits the actual time, but not the millennium. Jehovah shall be king over all the earth; in that day there shall be one Jehovah and His name one.

Review of Dr. Brown: 3. The Millennium — Display of the Kingdom in Judgment.

THE two visions in Dan. 2-7, to which our attention is challenged, are as strong evidence as need be asked to the falsehood of the post-millennial theory of the advent.

First, as to Dan. 2, it is manifest that the stone cut out without hands—symbolizing the kingdom of God introduced by Christ—falls with destructive effect on the image in its final stage (i.e., the feet of iron and clay);, and that only after this execution of judgment does the stone become a great mountain and fill the earth. The stone smiting the symbol of this world's power is, according to the mysticists, “the Kingdom of Grace", (p. 315). “As Kingdoms, simply—as a mere succession of civil monarchies—the vision has nothing to do with them, and the kingdom of Christ has no quarrel with them; for civil government, as such, whatever be the form of it, is a Divine ordinance. The mission of the Church is not to supplant, but to impregnate and pervade it with a religious character, and to render it subservient to the glory of God” (pp. 319-420). Is this a fair intelligent interpretation of God's kingdom breaking in pieces and consuming the great Imperial powers of this world? Is it a reasonable explanation that the blow of the stone which breaks and disperses utterly the iron and clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, means the Church impregnating and pervading civil government with a religious character? Is it possible that a man should be so blinded by a false system as to put Matt. 13:31-33 along with Nebuchadnezzar's dream, as if they were akin? What! a woman hiding leaven in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened, analogous to a stone crushing the image of imperial power, and then expanding into a great mountain, that fills the whole earth!

The truth is that neither Nebuchadnezzar's dream, nor Daniel's explanation, alludes to the kingdom of grace. When Christ came in grace, the Roman empire smote Him, not He it. Afterward that empire became nominally Christian, and established Christianity, instead of being destroyed by it. All this is entirely outside the statements of the chapter, for the feet and toes were not even formed till afterward. What the prophet gives is the wholly distinct picture, first, of an aggressive act which destroys the Gentile power; and secondly, of the growth and supremacy of the kingdom, when that judgment is executed. This, and not grace, is the first act of the stone, which is, therefore, altogether unfulfilled. Necessarily, then, the Kingdom as here portrayed, belongs to the future. The image, down to the toes, was already formed before the stone fell on them, and destroyed the entire statue, after which it expands and fills all the earth. It is as kingdoms rebellious against the God who ordained them that the vision has everything to do with; and the stone has nothing to say to them pregnating and pervading with a religious character, but to supplanting and sweeping powers off the face of the earth, that the kingdom of God in Christ may become paramount. Christianity is not the point here, nor Christendom, as in Matt. 13, but the judgment of Gentile imperial power by God's kingdom in Christ, which thereon spreads over the earth as the waters cover the sea. It is not a mere difference of prosperity or extent, but of character as contrasted as judgment with grace—of administration as different as Jesus displayed in power and glory is from that same Jesus hid in God. The weapons are wholly new, the change of dispensation complete.

Dan. 7 is substantially similar. The kingdom of the Son of Man over all people, nations, and languages, is after the fourth beast is destroyed in consequence of the blasphemies of the little horn. Dr. B. misquotes ver. 25, which means that the times and laws (not the saints) are given into the hands of the little horn. But this is the error of most divines. What has this to do with “the kingdom of grace,” so called? Is it not divine judgment in the strictest sense—not the eternal judgment of the dead before the great white throne of Rev. 20, but that of Rev. 19? It is an absurd begging of the question, and even opposition to the plainest Scripture, to ask “who does not see that this has nothing to do with the second personal advent of Christ” (p. 329)? Dr. B. is quite right in joining Psa. 2 with this scene; but does he really believe that Christ's breaking the nations with a rod of iron, and dashing them in pieces like a potter's vessel, is the kingdom of grace, and not the execution of judgment on the quick? Does he want us to believe that grace and judgment, even to consigning the beast and the false prophet to the lake of fire, are the same thing, and not irreconcilably opposite? Now the Lord works by the Holy Ghost through the Gospel on souls; then He will destroy nations. Is this no change of constitution, form, or dispensation, but merely its latent energies set free, and its internal resources developed, for the benediction of a miserable world? Can lusion be more complete or plain? Destruction of earthly power, according to this teaching, is the full blow of heavenly grace. “The whole is there from the first, not a new element is added Expansion and development, growth and maturity, are all the difference” (p. 332). Post-millennialism has its “development,” no less than Popery.

It is not correct that Dan. 7:26, any more than 2 Thess. 2:8, intimates the gradual nature of the destruction to fall on the Lord's enemies. It means that the effect of the judgment will be thorough, not a slow process, nor repeated acts of vengeance. And to insinuate that an outpouring of wrath from above on the gathered hosts of the west is “carnal warfare” is to my mind bolder than becomes a man with God's word.

Ben Ezra (i.e., Lacuna) seems to think almost all interpreters of Scripture regard the prophecy of the little stone as fully accomplished in Christ's incarnation and cross, and the mountain in the Christian Church (vol. I., pp. 146-147). But this is not so. Probably most Latins follow Jerome, who was himself led away by Origen's allegorizing; and beyond doubt a more decidedly non-natural explanation can hardly be conceived. But Hippolytus applies the fall of the stone to Christ's judgment at his second advent; and so does even Theodoret (in Dan. 7). The latter reasons elaborately against the supposition that the fifth empire is in progress. “But if they say that the former presence of the Lord is signified by these words, let them show the empire of the Romans destroyed immediately after the appearing of our Savior; for quite contrariwise, one may find it in full vigor, not subverted, at the birth of the Savior.... If, therefore, that former event, the Lord's nativity, did not destroy the Roman empire, it remains that we should understand His second appearing.” There appears to be some confusion in what follows from the good Bishop of Cyrus; for it is evident that the expansion of the stone into a mountain that filled the whole earth was after the execution of judgment on the Roman empire in its final divided state. Crushing and destroying, too, not saving, is the character of the stone's action from the first, as here depicted; and that is not grace, but judgment. To call judgment “carnal” is a sin as well as an error.

Rom. 8:19-25 clearly leads us to the same conclusion. It is a question neither of this age nor of eternity, but of the intervening millennium. Preaching, profession, or even the real faith of saints, will not deliver the creature from that vanity to which it has been made subject since the fall. The outpouring of the Pentecostal Spirit left it as a whole groaning and travailing in pain together as before. Even the Christians who have the first fruits of the Spirit groan as they wait, not for more of the same kind to meet their need, but for the redemption of the body, when the longing of the creature shall be gratified with the revelation of the sons of God; thereon follows its own deliverance from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. We, a new creation in Christ, stand in the liberty of grace now; then the creature itself, the still captive earth, shall enjoy the liberty of glory. How will this be brought about? If the deliverance of the creature depends on the manifestation of God's sons, the answer is certain. It is not in this age; for, all through, our life is hid with Christ in God. It cannot be in eternity; for this will not be till the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up. It is between the two, as we have said already. “When Christ our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear in glory.” Then and thus shall the millennium be brought about.

“Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world?... Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” (1 Cor. 6). Assuredly this, too, can only refer to the millennium, not to the present time, nor to eternity. Not to the present; because we are called to suffer now, not to reign. Not to eternity; because there will be no world to judge then. “The Kingdom,” i.e., the special kingdom, whether of Christ or of those who, having suffered with Him, shall also reign together with Him, will have terminated; though in another sense all saints, millennial or ante-millennial, shall forever reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.

Again, God has made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure, which He hath purposed in Himself for the administration of the fullness of the time. And what is this purpose of His? To gather together (or head up) in one all things in Christ, both those in heaven and those in earth; in Him in whom we have also obtained an inheritance (Eph. 1:9-11.) This is millennial, and as distinctly marked off from the present time as from eternity. The eternal state will be no such display of Christ's headship, with His associated bride over all things, but the delivery to the Father of that displayed supremacy, that God—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—may be all in all. And as to the present, what can be in more evident contrast, whether in good or evil? Judaism, Heathenism, Mahometanism, Popery, sectarianism, worldliness, ritualism, rationalism, rampant in Christendom: is all this God's purpose? Is this the heading up of all things in Christ? Even if we look only at that which is good, it is a good of quite another complexion and aim; for God is now gathering out a people for His name, forming His elect from Jews and Gentiles into one body, not gathering all the universe under the headship of Christ. Clearly, therefore, as it falls in with the characteristics neither of this age nor of eternity, the Scripture cited must refer to the blessed millennial days, when Jehovah-Jesus shall be not only king over all the earth, but head of all things heavenly and earthly, the Church being united and reigning over all with Him.

Observe, too, that the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks both of the time and of the sphere of the millennium as “to come,” and manifestly is the mark of distinction both from the present and from eternity. For the inspired writer designates the miraculous displays which were signs to unbelievers in the earthly days of the Gospel, as “powers of the age to come,” i.e., partial testimonies of that energy which will characterize the future age, when Jehovah shall not more truly forgive all iniquities than heal all diseases, and the creature shall be set free and joyful (Psa. 96-97), instead of groaning in bondage as now. And as this is a defined future age (μέλλων αἰῶν) so the theater of it is designated in Heb. 2:5, the world, or the habitable earth to come (ήάἰκουμένη ή μέλλουσα), a description which, as it is expressly not the present, so it is inapplicable to eternity. It is not heaven but the earth, and the earth not dissolved but placed under the rule of the glorified Son of Man, when all things shall be seen to be put under Him. Another remark, too, it may be well to make, that of the three Scriptures which speak of universal blessedness and glory for the earth, none connects it with the preached Gospel, all with divine judgment. Thus in Num. 14:21 is the first mention of this purpose of the Lord, after Israel had betrayed the apostasy of their hearts, when the Lord pardoned according to the intercession of Moses, but pronounced judgment on all that provoked Him by their unbelief. A remnant was saved then, and so it will be at the end of this age. Isa. 11 is the second, where the picture of millennial blessedness; and in this the earth is full of the knowledge of Jehovah, is prefaced by the Lord smiting the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips slaying the wicked. The judicial act the Apostle Paul (2 Thess. 2:8) explains to be the manifestation of Christ's presence, which does not convert sinners but destroys the man of sin, in order to His millennial reign. The third and last case is Hab. 2:14, where it is evident that the filling of the earth with the knowledge of Jehovah's glory is in no way the fruit of people laboring for love or vanity, but of God's mighty intervention for His own glory, when the proud head of nations shall be brought to naught.

Thus all is uniform in Scripture, and as no passage attributes the great change for the world to that which is now entrusted to man, so all Scripture show that the saints will be taken to heaven, that men on earth will be judged, and that the days of heaven on earth will follow to the praise of the Lord alone.

Review of Dr. Brown: 4. Millennial Revival of Jewish Peculiarities

It is thought strange that any Christians should agree with Jews in their views of Old Testament prophecies, and look for a rebuilt temple, a re-established priesthood, restored sacrifices, and an Israelitish supremacy. But Dr. Brown misstates both Scripture and ecclesiastical history in his zeal against such convictions.

What our risen Lord corrected (Acts 1) was not the expectation of the restoration of the kingdom to Israel, but the expectation of it “at this time.” Rather does He confirm the apostles in it, while intimating that it was not theirs to know times and seasons which the Father put in His own power. That element was not expelled from their minds wholly or in part, but shown to be reserved in the Father's hands. Another work was about to proceed, not Israelitish supremacy yet, but a witness to the dead and risen Jesus in the power of the spirit both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. Their error was not so much in the thing itself as in the time, just as on the last journey He added a parable because He was near Jerusalem, and they thought the king would immediately appear. The parable, then, like the answer before the ascension, corrects their haste, but maintains instead of combating their expectancy of the kingdom. “He said, therefore, A certain nobleman went into a fin. country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return.” Then we have the immediate work, not the kingdom received, and his return; but the servants entrusted with the money began then to trade with it meanwhile till he came. And lastly he comes back, having received the kingdom. They were only premature, not wholly wrong, and the Lord did not set aside, but only postponed the expectation derived from the prophets, which He never denied, though He did 'reveal what would intervene between His glory on high and His return. The popular view of Christendom, as usual, is ignorance, even of the New Testament, which it employs to set aside the hopes of the Old Testament. Again, it is quite incorrect that any question of restoring the kingdom to Israel agitated the saints in Galatia or at Colosse. It was a wholly contrary principle, and decidedly akin to the ordinary view of Christendom, viz., bringing Christians now under the law or Jewish ordinances. To hold fast Jewish expectations for Israel to be restored at Christ's second advent is a main means of preserving Christianity distinct and uncontaminated by Judaism; and thus the apostle ever fought against those who would Judaize now. The heresies of Cerinthus or others who grossly Judaized in early days were the result of carrying out these errors to the full. None of them held Christianity pure and simple for the church now, the restored kingdom for Israel by and by, but jumbled all together to the degradation of our own position and hopes, and the defrauding of Israel; and Christendom, in general, is fallen into the same error ill principle, though less offensively in form, and with better views (thank God) of Christ and His work. Even the orthodox pre-millenialists of the second and third centuries missed heavenly truth, as they failed to see the future restoration of Israel to their land, and the promises then to be accomplished in them nationally. The overwhelming majority of Christians (or at least of professing Christians) rejects not only premillennialism but the restoration of Israel to their land, as to which Dr. B., strange to say, agrees with us against the mass alike of ancients and moderns.

There is no ground to expect new revelations, but the fulfillment of old prophecies is another matter. According to these predictions, the world to come will be blessed under Messiah and the new covenant. Christians will then be on high, and the gospel, as it is or ought to be now preached, will have done its work here below. Where lies the difficulty? It is hard to see. That all nations shall flow to the religious center of the millennial age, the mountain of Jehovah's house in Jerusalem, that the Canaanites shall no more be in His house, that no uncircumcised stranger shall enter into His sanctuary, are all true and consistent. So in Mal. 1:11, Jehovah's name shall be great among the Gentiles, &c. If they contradict each other, to take them figuratively would not really reconcile them; but there is no discrepancy whatever. Objections of this sort are hardly better than cavil, which, even if we could not solve them at all, cannot and ought not to bring to naught the overwhelming force of the positive evidence.

Review of Dr. Brown: 5 & 6. Millennial Coexistence of Earthly and Heavenly Things

The great defect of Dr. Brown's reasoning here, as elsewhere, is the assumption that things are to abide essentially as they are now till the eternal state closes the present. This is unequivocally to ignore Scripture, which speaks of the age to come in contra-distinction to that which now is, as of course before eternity. It is in vain to take advantage of those who ignorantly mix up the heavenly and the earthly, and to break forth into the exaggerated cry— “What a mongrel state! What an abhorred mixture of things totally inconsistent with each other!” The millennium differs from all that has been. The transfiguration was but a partial and passing sample. Joshua Perry's desertion of his friends for the opposite view here will avail little against Scripture. Take John 17:22-23, and compare with it Eph. 1:10-12, and Rev. 21:9-27. Are not the glorified saints, made perfect in one, to be a proof to the world that the Father sent the Son, and loved the saints as He loved Christ? How deny it when they appear in the same glory? In what condition will “the world” be? Is not this the display of the glorified to men in flesh? And when can this be save in the millennium? Will there be “the world” in the eternal state to know anything of the sort?

The effort to make the millennium a mere extension of present blessing, more converts, &c., with “not one(!)” element in it that has not been already realized, needs no refutation to those who accept what has been before us. The question is not one of salvation but of God's ways in the government of the world. The end of the age is when the Son of Man takes (not, gives up) the kingdom, and, having received it, returns. He will then judge the habitable earth (τὴν οἰκουμέην, Acts 17), as He will judge the dead before He gives up the kingdom.

Eph. 2:14-19, and John 4:21-23 apply solely to Christians now since redemption, and neither to believers before Christ, nor to those of the millennium. Isa. 2:2.3, Mic. 4, and Zech. 14 are equally explicit as to a wholly different order, accompanied by marks which are certainly not seen under Christianity. When the prophets are fulfilled, Christ will be judging among the peoples, not as now gathering out a people for His name by the gospel; and nations shall learn war no more; and Israel shall be restored to their land, and the Gentiles shall be thoroughly humbled. You cannot safely Christianize Judaism any more than Judaize Christianity. Distinguish this age from that which is to come, as Scripture does, and those objections vanish; confound them, and you have the main source of Christendom's ruin, and the chief mischief of Dr. Brown's work, because it denies the distinction, place, and responsibility, both of the Christian now, and of the Jew by-and-by.

One evident consequence is, that those who deny the revival of Jewish pre-eminence in the millennium find themselves hopelessly dumb in presence of such scriptures as the closing chapters of Ezekiel; and the efforts after the figurative makes the late Duke of Manchester the ally, so far, of Dr. Brown, blending thus in one vague company the upholders and the deniers of Israel's national hope. Such is the effect of error. The strongest evidence has been already adduced to prove that the condition which the prophet depicts is the most striking contrast with the Christian state. If it was only the absence of Pentecost, when the feasts shall be once more celebrated by restored Israel, how distinctive of their future, as compared with their past (or with our present) of which that feast is the standing type!

Review of Dr. Brown: 7. Millennial Binding of Satan

This popular scheme not only eliminates the presence of the Lord from the coming age, but explains away the exclusion of Satan. It is asked, “If the expectation of an entire cessation of Satanic influence be indeed Scriptural, how came it to pass that no mention is made of it—not so much as a hint given of it in all Scripture, but in this solitary passage (Rev. 21:3, 7), in a book, the import of whose symbols has divided the Church to this day?” I answer, first, that the unbelief seems to me deplorable which would reject a truth if it be but clearly revealed in this book of Scripture; and there are as plain revelations here as in any other part of the Bible, as is manifest from the hold which numerous portions take of the simplest believers throughout Christendom. But, secondly, it is a mistake that no hint is given elsewhere of the same truth.

Isa. 13:6 declares the humiliation in the day of Jehovah, which awaits the powers that govern men, both unseen and seen. He shall punish the host of the high ones on high, and the kings of the earth on the earth (for this is the true sense, which the authorized version obscures and enfeebles). The next verse intimates that it is not their final judgment, but a setting aside from their mischievous influence “in that day,” after which they shall be dealt with (and as we know from the Revelation, not for a limited time, but for eternity). “And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be visited.” Thus all are in due season and place. The Jewish prophet reveals what was bound up with the deliverance of earth and Israel with the nations. The final Christian prophecy lets us into the link of the future age with eternity. Even Dr. B. confesses as perfectly possible that the general idea expressed by Isaiah is symbolically developed by John. It is a superficial thought that this is no part of the putting aside of Satan's power, or a shift to which he who believes it is reduced.

Isa. 27:1 may be compared, “In that day the LORD, with his sore, and great, and strong sword, shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.” Granted that the language is figurative; but what do the figures mean but the destruction of Satan's power among men in a way quite unprecedented? Only, of course, the latest revelation must be heard, explaining the figures supplied in the earlier communication.

It is only the New Testament, which, revealing the Trinity, also develops the truth as to the world, the flesh, and the devil. In the Old Testament the full character of them is comparatively in the dark, Nevertheless enough is revealed from the first to indicate their presence and action, though not yet detected as they were when Christ manifested them in the power of His Spirit. The Old Testament shows him (save in the earliest temptation, as the Serpent) rather as an adversary, an accuser in nature, &c. (1 Chron. 21; Job 1; 2 Psa. 109; Zech. 3). The New Testament shows this enemy as the Prince of the power of the air, and lord of this world, and everywhere supposes their approaching downfall, “Art thou come to destroy us?” says the man with an unclean spirit (Mark 1) “Art thou come hither to torment us before the time?” say the two demoniacs from the country of the Gergesenes (Matt. 8) “And they besought him (says Luke 8:31) that he would not command them to go out into the deep” (τὴν ἄβνσσου, the bottomless pit). The time was not yet come; but the demons had the presentiment before them. The word of God had sentenced them long ago. Christianity, as such, had yet to be brought in; and in appearance Satan acquired greater power than ever by the death of Him who in that death really broke his power in God's sight, however slowly and by stages the results of the victory may be manifested among men, and against the powers of evil. But Rom. 16 declared that the God of peace would bruise Satan under the feet of the saints shortly. That this does not take in each stage of his defeat, but only the final act, is more than any man should say. The casting out of demons by the disciples was to our Lord the keynote of the last triumphal song (Luke 10:17-19). But Eph. 6:12 is explicit that, whatever the victory before God which faith even now knows in the cross (Heb. 2:14), the Christian has still to struggle against principalities, against powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual [hosts] of wickedness in the heavenlies. Other allusions in the Epistles are familiar. And most appropriately, in the last book of the New Testament, which presents the wind-up of time and the eternal scene, the Spirit indicates the successive applications of power to the overthrow of the devil. First, he and his angels are cast down from heaven to earth—not by spiritual energy of faith in the heart, but by angelic ministration (Rev. 12). Next, he is effectually shut out, even from the earth, in the abyss, or bottomless pit, by angelic power, just before the millennium (Rev. 20:1-3). Lastly, though allowed for a short space to emerge after the thousand years, and to deceive the nations then living in the four corners of the earth, it is but the eve of his final and everlasting perdition; for he is thereon cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where there is but torment unceasingly, and whence no being ever escapes (Rev. 20:10).

How do people meet this distinct testimony of God? On the plea that, as the fall of Satan in Rev. 12 meant paganism losing its influence in the Roman empire under Constantine, so the binding of Satan in the abyss for a thousand years meant the cause of Christ carrying it everywhere, and the Church never permitting the devil to gain an inch of ground over the world for that time (Brown, pp. 379-386). The grand mistake which vitiates the popular theory is that the work of grace is made everything, and thus the Scriptures that speak of the divine government of the world in the millennium are confounded with those that relate to the salvation of souls—the coming age, with this age. It is not meant that God will cease to save man by grace on earth during the millennium; but the distinctive character and prime object of that age will be, not the gathering God's children into one by the Spirit sent down from heaven, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ, but divine power displayed in the Son of man's putting down Satan, and reigning over the earth till all be subjected to Him, after which He surrenders the kingdom, that God may be all in all throughout eternity.

The principles Dr. B. here lays down are mistaken, and his reasoning of no force. He argues from 1 John 3:8-16, Heb. 2:14-15, and Rom. 16:20, that Satan's presence and action are inseparably connected with man in his fallen state—consequently, as Hengstenberg puts it, that death, sin, and Satan reign during the thousand years! Certainly the apostles, as well as the prophet Isaiah (11, 32, 35, 36) have taken pains to teach us the very reverse—the prophet dwelling on earthly things, the apostles chiefly on the heavenly side.

I do not deny analogies to the past and present in the Apocalyptic visions; but the moment you insist on the punctual fulfillment of such a prophecy as Rev. 12 in the Christianizing the empire under Constantine, the failure becomes manifest. It was not the spiritual victory of the saints, but Michael and his angels, that ejected the dragon and his angels from heaven. The brethren overcame him thus, while he was not cast down, and this is the warfare the Christian has to wage (Eph. 6). But a quite different war casts him out of heaven, not saints by faith, but angelic, by virtue of divine power, exercised judicially. When Rev. 12:8-9 is accomplished, the Christian warfare will have no more place here than Satan and his angels will have place on high. A total change will have occurred, and another testimony will be in progress on earth, Christians having been caught up on high. It would have been a strange issue of Constantine's victory that the woman (who in this scheme means the Church) should thereon flee into the wilderness to escape the enemy's rage. We could better understand triumph than flight, and that the high place, rather than the wilderness, should protect the people of God, as the fruit of such a victory, if here intended. It was a singular crisis to bring persecution on the woman when the Gospel had triumphed over Satan in his pagan tools. Dr. B. speaks of error flying before the truth; but his text shows us the woman flying from the face of the serpent. Is this the interpretation of ch. 12 which is to inspire confidence in his view of ch. 20?

Review of Dr. Brown: 8. Millennial Features and the Little Season That Follows

Dr. B. concedes somewhat more than the mass of post-millennialists; for he allows that the millennium will be characterized not only by the universal diffusion of revealed truth, by unlimited subjection to Christ, by universal peace, by much spiritual power and glory, by the ascendancy of truth and righteousness in human affairs, by great temporal prosperity, but by the territorial restoration of the natural Israel then converted, So far there is nothing to contest, though there is much to desire, especially as to Christ Himself. The main divergence is the answer to the question how the millennium is to be brought in. The common notion is that it will be by means at present in operation, indefinitely increased, but not, as we believe, by the appearing and personal reign of Christ, judging the quick first, and finally the dead. The difference is immense in itself and in its results. A mistake here, though not fatal to faith in Christ, confuses all truth as to the ways of God, flatters Christendom instead of warning it, and lowers Christ as unduly as it exalts the Church while it is on earth. The moral effects are thus as disastrous for the soul as the error in interpretation darkens the mind to almost every part of the Bible. Nothing more directly tends to put new wine into old skins, to the ruin of both.

It is evident also that Dr. B.'s adherence to his former convictions, in the matter of Israel's restoration nationally to their land, fits ill with his adoption of Whitby's (or the common) hypothesis. For national conversion and restoration to a particular land does not savor of the gospel any more than temporal prosperity and universal peace or mere profession of the truth. And in fact the Apostle Paul contrasts, in Rom. 11 The future destiny of Israel with their lot now, while the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles. “As touching the gospel, they [the Jews] are enemies for your sakes [i.e., the Gentiles now grafted in], but, as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sakes.” When the fullness of the Gentiles is come in, their partial blindness will cease, and so all Israel shall be saved, not by their believing the gospel now preached and thus merging in Christianity, but by the coming of the Deliverer out of Sion, who shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob. And if their casting away was the reconciling of the world [as now under the gospel], what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead? There the Lord, “reversing all His former methods,” will not merely deal with a chosen people, calling out the Church to the faith of His cross and heavenly glory, in spite of Satan seemingly more than ever paramount, but He, with His glorified saints, will come and expel the enemy, and not without judgments establish His ancient and now repentant people, filling the glad earth, which as yet groans, with the knowledge of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea. All Scripture, of Old and New Testament alike, looks on to this mighty change, while it attests the faithfulness of God in the meantime, whatever the sorrow and shame through the allowed power of Satan till that day. But manifestly the distinction from the Gentile of the Jew, blessed as a nation in their own land, is precisely what cannot be under the gospel, which shows it now blotted out entirely, for God is making Jew and Gentile who believe one new man, and building them together for His habitation through the Spirit. The millennium will behold wholly different conditions.

It is easy to see that almost all his proofs point to another system, not the gospel. Thus Isa. 11 supposes a divine smiting of the wicked or lawless one; and this Paul binds indissolubly with the appearing of Christ's presence, not a mere providential event in His absence (2 Thess. 2:8). So Isa. 25:7 is surrounded by divine judgment, and the resurrection of the saints (compare 1 Cor. 15.) as the circumstances and means of “that day's” deliverance. Again, Psa. 2 supposes the execution of judgment by our Lord, and (according to Rev. 2:26-27) by the glorified saints with Him Isa. 2 is in contrast with the gospel, which goes out to all nations, not all nations flocking to Jerusalem, verse 4 being the very reverse of what the Lord declares shall be in this age till the end come (Matt. 24:7-14). So blinding is this scheme, that the gospel is regarded as “the rod of Christ's strength!” Now, if any intelligent Christian will only examine Psa. 110, he cannot but see that the first verse, Christ's session at Jehovah's right hand, is while the gospel goes forth; whereas, in verse 2, the sending forth of Christ's rod out of Zion is when the time comes to rule in, the midst of His enemies, not converting them into His friends and forming them for heaven. Being a priest forever after the order of Melchizedec, He will of course be of that order then, as He is now: indeed then He will exercise it fully, and be displayed as such. But then only, and not now, He will strike through kings, because it will be the day of His wrath; whereas now it is the day of His grace, when the gospel is being preached to every creature. It is extraordinary that a sensible man should cite Isa. 66 and Zech. 14 for a similar purpose, seeing that both open with the execution of unprecedented judgments when the Lord shall come with His saints and plead with all flesh by fire and sword, and cleave Mount Olivet as the standing witness that the returning King of Israel is Jehovah the Creator. The blessing here is after this: but is the gospel?

Dr. B. thinks there will be declension in the millennium. Though there be no distinct proof, analogy is certainly in favor of the thought, which appears to be confirmed by the typical teaching in Numbers. But there is no real support of the notion that this “little season” may extend through one, two, or three centuries. However, this is so purely speculation as not to deserve further notice. But the last gathering to war of Gog and Magog has nothing in common with Luke 18 and 17:20-30, Thess. 5:2-3, and 2 Peter 3, 5:3-4. Good and evil are entirely apart in Rev. 20, whereas in the other passages they are mingled as now till judgment falls. Nor is there any coming of Christ in their case; but “that day” spans over the millennium and the space beyond, so as to embrace all judgment of quick and dead within the kingdom. There is no coming for the great white throne, because the Lord had come to reign more than a thousand years before. All the dead who had not shared in the first resurrection go and stand before Him to be judged according to their works, and are accordingly consigned to the lake of fire. On the other hand, the righteous enjoy the new heavens and new earth forever, reigning in life by one, Jesus Christ, spite of the surrender of the kingdom to God as we are told in 1 Cor. 15:24.

Review of Dr. Brown: 9. Objections

2 Thess. 2:1-8. An effort is made to parry this witness, which the late M. Faber, followed by Dr. B., regard, as in their judgment, “the only apparent evidence for the pre-millennial advent.” The statement of the case is very inexact. It is not true that what excited and unsettled the Thessalonians was the time of Christ's second personal advent, but the false representation that the day of the Lord was come ένἐστηκεν. Nor is the express subject of discourse the second personal “coming” of our Lord, but a disproof of the error about the “day” which had alarmed them.

The apostle beseeches them, by a motive drawn from their bright hope of Christ's presence and their gathering to Him, not to be shaken by the rumor about the day of the Lord. Then he proceeds to show the impossibility of that day arriving before the well-known apostasy was developed, and the manifestation of the man of sin, which evils are to be judged in the day of the Lord. The παρουσία and the ἡμέρα of the Lord are not only not identified as by Dr. B., but they are in contra-distinction; for the former is used as a comfort to the Thessalonians, as well as a disproof of the rumor that the terrible day of the Lord was then present. The Thessalonians were persuaded by some (and the authority of a letter of the apostle was falsely alleged in support of it), that the day of the Lord was (not at hand or imminent, but) arrived, as pointed out in an early part of this book. They, teachers and taught, must have meant some such figurative sense as Dr. B. contends for; and there is no doubt that the Old Testament not infrequently uses the phrase in this way, as for Babylon, Egypt, &c., an earnest, it would seem, of its full force at the end of the age.

Now the apostle meets the error by showing them in chap. 1, that the day is not figurative but a real personal revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with His mighty angels, taking vengeance in flaming fire on them that know not God, and on them that obey not the gospel. It is not His party triumphing by the gospel, nor a political overthrow of their adversaries, but a solemn retribution—to the troubled saints “rest with us,” and to the troublers tribulation. Then he assumes their remembrance of his first epistle, in which he had taught them both about the presence of the Lord to translate the saints to Himself on high, and about the day of the Lord with its sudden blow on the careless world. Hence he beseeches them by that joyful hope, not to be troubled by the pretended revelation that the day of the Lord was there; for this (not the presence of the Lord) could not be till the ripening of the predicted horrors which that day is to avenge. When the Lord does appear, the saints appear with Him, instead of being then caught up to Him. Hence the apostle discriminates, and as he was inspired to connect our gathering together to the Lord with His presence, so he links the judgment of the man of sin with the manifestation of His presence. Compare 2 Thess. 2:1 with verse 8. The result is, then, that while all agree that the presence of the Lord in verse 1 is personal, verse 8, far from being some previous and preparatory figure, is a subsequent stage of His advent, and means, not merely His presence in order to gather to Himself above those who look for Him, but the appearing or epiphany of His presence, when He destroys the lawless enemy or Antichrist of the last days of this age. Nowhere does Daniel attribute his destruction to the church, nor does any Scripture attribute it to the truth, as Dr. B. alleges without the smallest reason.

Matt. 24:29-31. The assertion is, that the direct and primary sense of the prophecy is Christ's coming in judgment against Jerusalem; and that this is decided by verse 34. I ask Dr. B. to compare with this Luke 21, where he will see that the Lord, as there represented, brings in the times of the Gentiles not yet run out after the destruction by the Romans, and His own, advent after those times, and not till then says, This generation shall not pass away till all be fulfilled. Will any man stand to such a sense of the prophecy, and to claim for it our Lord's decision? Joel 2 refers to the same great event, but, though accomplished in part, it is not fulfilled yet any more than Mal. 4.

Rev. 19:11-21 (pp. 442-446). Dr. B. thinks the “detail” is the very thing which proves! it not to be the personal coming of Christ, and contrasts the passage with Matt. 16:27; Heb. 9:28; 2 Thess. 1; Col. 3; Titus 2; and even Rev. 1. Can reasoning be less solid? Doctrinal use or allusion in a few words proves that a prophetic book cannot mean the greatest event of prophecy, because this gives details, the other texts not Where could detail be revealed with such propriety as in Revelation, and surely in the visions rather than in the mere preface of the book It is in vain, I would add, to found an argument on ἡροσώπου (Rev. 20:11), as if it involved the idea of Christ's presence then. The word which would warrant such an inference would be παρουσία. “From whose face” applies wherever Christ may be, whether He come again to the earth or the earth and the heaven flee away from before Him as is expressly said in this very clause. It remains then that post-millennialism is a dream, and that Christ's appearing is blotted out from Rev. 19, where God reveals it, and put in where the nature of the case (Rev. 20:11) excludes it. Can there be more palpable insubjection to scripture or love of a tradition that makes void the word of God? Matt. 20 v. 31-36, with which the close of Rev. 20 is identified, is exclusively a judgment of the living nations when He comes again; Rev. 20:11-15 is the final judgment of the dead who did not rise to reign with Christ. Can contrast be more definite and certain?

Rev. 5:10. Dr. B. understands the future reign on (or over) the earth as relating to the ultimate triumphs of Christ's cause upon earth during the present state (the vicious thought that everywhere pervades his book), more than to the glorified condition of the saints (pp. 446-447). Is refutation called for? The passage proves that not even the redeemed in heaven are yet (at the point of the Apocalypse referred to) reigning over the earth. They are to reign with Christ, as all scripture shows; and this, as the book elsewhere proves, is the result of His coming when they are risen, and He has received the kingdom. A triumph of the church on earth during the present state is contrary to scripture. The apostasy, not a reign of Christendom, and then the man of sin revealed, precede His presence in judgment or the day of the Lord.

Matt. 19:28. No wonder Dr. B. does not object to vague and incorrect statements of the case which confound the millennium with the eternal state of which Rev. 21:5 treats. But a little consideration suffices to demonstrate that the fulfillment of the Lord's assurance to the apostles is in “the kingdom,” in the millennial age, and neither before nor after it. For “the regeneration” is expressly said to be when the Son of man shall sit on His throne of glory. Now assuredly this is when He comes, not before the second advent, nor when heaven and earth flee away before His face as He sits on a wholly different throne, the great white throne for judging the dead (not the twelve tribes of Israel). There are none said to be assessors with Christ in that eternal judgment of the dead. Not even Dr. B. contends that “the regeneration” is a picture applicable during the present state, when Christ is not come but seated on His Father's throne (Rev. 3:21): will he argue that during the eternal state there can be an apostolic royal judgment of the twelve tribes of Israel? If it be neither, the millennium is the sole alternative that remains; and if it be so, in what condition but a glorified one can the apostles thus judge Israel? Or are the judges and the judged to be both explained away?

Heb. 4:9, the sabbath-keeping of glory is the last objection Dr. B. discusses at length. I have no care to interpose on behalf of the seventh millennary as the sabbatism of the apostle; but the notion of Calvin, which Dr. B. endorses, that it is a question of the present rest, which is the portion of believers in Jesus, seems to me clean contrary to the scope of the chapter. We are called to fear and to labor now; we are in the wilderness still, and are only on our way to the rest of God. We who have believed enter, but we are not yet entered into the rest. We have already entered into rest in Jesus, as to which we do not fear, nor do we labor. But we do fear settling down when we ought to be marching on, lest, a promise being left of entering into God's rest (i.e. in glory), any of us should seem to have come short of it. It is not time yet for the believer to rest from his works, but to use diligence to enter into that blessed rest, which is not arrived but remains for the people of God. Post-millennialism, here as everywhere hinders intelligence of the scriptures.

My task is closed. I believe I have answered fairly and conclusively, if scripture be really our standard, the arguments of Dr. Brown. How far the answer is satisfactory to him or to those who share the popular view of a post-millennial advent of Christ must rest with their consciences now. The day hastens which will declare the truth to all who have not already ascertained it with certainty from the word of God. May He bless by the power of His spirit His own revelation to the praise of the name of Jesus.

The Righteous Dead Raised

For understanding Rev. 20:4, in its literal and obvious meaning, we possess a divine warrant which ought to cut short all controversy on the subject. In ch. 11:17, 18, the same great events are particularly spoken of in language, the literality of which cannot be doubted. From this passage we, moreover, learn, that the martyrs are not exclusively the subjects of the first resurrection, but that all the righteous dead partake therein— “We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power and hast reigned. And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and to them that fear thy name, small and great.” That this takes place at the commencement of the millennial period, is clear from verse 15.

The Righteousness of God

Rom. 1:16, 17.

What does the expression, “the righteousness of God,” mean? It is evidently of the very essence of the gospel; yet the common explanations are to me the most unsatisfactory. The obedience of Christ in his life (blessed and perfect as it was) could not have saved sinners from the wrath of God. Will you, Mr. Editor, kindly give your thoughts upon the subject? “Beta.”

“The righteousness of God” embraces the entire display in God's ways in Christ, one of the least of which, if we are to compare things which are all perfect in their place, was His accomplishment of the law here below. For the law was not intended to express fully and absolutely God's nature and character. It stated, if we may so say, the lowest terms on which man could live before Him. It was the demand of what God could not but require, even from a sinful Israelite, if he pretended to obey God. Whereas, though the Lord Jesus was made under the law, and submitted in His grace to all its claims, He went much farther, even in His living obedience, and infinitely beyond it in His death. For the righteousness of the law threatens no death to the righteous, but necessarily proclaims life for his portion, who magnified and made it honorable. But God's righteousness goes immeasurably deeper as well as higher. It is a justifying righteousness, not a condemning one, as that of the law must be to the sinner who has it not. Hence the Lord Himself established the sanctions of the law in the most solemn way by suffering unto death under its curse: He bore the penalty of the ungodly, of which substitution the Ten words knew nothing, because they are law, and so to die is grace. There was no mitigation, much less annulling of the law's authority. Divine righteousness provided One who could and would settle the whole question for the sinner with God. Nor this only; for God raised Christ from the dead. He was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification. He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father; His moral being, His purposes, His truth, His love, His relationship, His glory, in short, was at stake in the grave of Christ. But God raised him up, and set Him at His own right hand in heaven, as a part of His divine righteousness; for no seat, no reward inferior to that, could suit the One who had vindicated God in all His majesty, holiness, grace, and truth, who had, so to speak, enabled God to carry out His precious design of justifying the ungodly, Himself just all the while. Thenceforward, to him who has faith, it is no longer a question of the law or of legal righteousness, which rested on the responsibility of man, but Christ having gone down into death in atonement, and thus glorified God to the uttermost, the ground is changed, and it becomes a question of God's righteousness. If man has been proved by the law to have brought forth wrongs, and only wrongs, God must have His rights, the very first of which is raising up Christ from the dead, and giving Him glory. Hence the Holy Spirit is said, in John 16 to convince the world of righteousness; and this, not because Christ fulfilled that which we violated, but because He is gone to the Father, and is seen no more till He return in judgment. It is not righteousness on earth, but its heavenly course and character, in the ascension of Christ, which is here spoken of. So, again, in 2 Cor. 5, it is in Christ glorified in heaven that we are made, or become, divine righteousness. It is plain, then, that the phrase, though no doubt embracing what Christians mean when they speak of Christ's righteousness imputed to us, is a far larger and more glorious thing. It includes not only that which glorified God on earth in living obedience, but the death of the cross, which if it met the deepest need of the sinner, broke the power of Satan in his last stronghold, and laid the immutable foundation for God's grace to reign through righteousness. Thus in Rom. 1:17, God's righteousness is said to be revealed in the gospel in contrast with man's righteousness claimed in the law; and being revealed, it is “from faith,” not from law-works: that is, it is a revelation on the principle of faith, not a work to be rendered on the ground of human responsibility. Therefore it is to be “faith.” He that believes gets the blessing. In Rom. 3:21, 22, it is formally contrasted with anything under the law, though the law and the prophets witnessed respecting it. It is “God's righteousness without law,” by faith of Jesus Christ, and hence “towards all men” in native tendency, but taking effect only “upon all them that believe.” It is here in special connection with redemption, and therefore it is added that God has set forth Christ a propitiation (or mercy-seat) through faith in His blood. See verses 24-26. In Rom. 1, it is shown to be incompatible with seeking to establish one's own righteousness, God's righteousness being complete, and the object of faith in Christ has to be submitted to, or we have no part or lot in it. 2 Cor. 5 rises higher, and shows what the saint is, according to the gospel of the glory of Christ made divine righteousness in Him risen and glorified. Hence in the latter epistle to the Philippians, that ripe sample and development of Christian experience, Paul, transported even to the last with this new and divine righteousness, shows us that, compared with it, he would not have the righteousness of the law if he could For what was of the law had no glory longer in his eyes because of the glory that excelled—that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness of God through faith. (Phil. 3) Far from superseding practical godliness, this righteousness of God in Christ strikes deep roots in the heart, and springs up in a harvest of kindred fruit, which is by Jesus Christ to God's glory and praise. (Phil. 1:11)

It is a singular fact that, while God used Rom. 1:17 to Luther's conversion, and we may say to the Reformation, neither he nor his companions, or their followers, ever apprehended the full truth conveyed by this blessed expression— “righteousness of God.” Hence it is habitually mistranslated in Luther's German Bible, where δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ is rendered “the righteousness which is available before God.” This, evidently, is far short of the truth; for a legal righteousness, if accomplished by man, would have availed before God. But God, in His grace, has accomplished in Christ and given an incomparably higher (i.e., a divine) righteousness; and nothing less than this are we made in Christ. Perhaps the imperfect view entertained by the great German Reformer may account in large measure for the fluctuations in his enjoyment of peace. The same thing applies to most Protestants up to our day, even where they are devoted Christians, and perhaps from a similar cause; for they have advanced little, if at all, beyond the light on this head possessed by Luther. May the children be led to search into the testimony of His Word as to this grave and deeply interesting theme! It is a humiliating circumstance that the professed comments on Scripture are so barren as to it.

The Righteousness of God: Answer

Rom. 1:16, 17.

What does the expression “the righteousness of God,” mean? It is evidently of the very essence of the Gospel; yet the common explanations are to me most unsatisfactory. The obedience of Christ in his life (blessed and perfect as it was) could not have saved sinners from the wrath of God. Will you, Mr. Editor, kindly give your thoughts upon the subject? “BETA.”

“The righteousness of God” embraces the entire display of God's ways in Christ, one of the least of which, if we are to compare things which are all perfect in their place, was His accomplishment of the law here below. For the law was not intended to express fully and absolutely God's nature and character. It stated, if we may so say, the lowest terms on which man could live before Him. It was the demand of what God could not but require, even from a sinful Israelite, if he pretended to obey God. Whereas, though the Lord Jesus was made under the law, and submitted in His grace to all its claims, He went much farther, even in His living obedience, and infinitely beyond it in His death. For the righteousness of the law threatens no death to the righteous, but necessarily proclaims life for his portion who magnified and made it honorable. God's righteousness goes immeasurably deeper as well as higher. It is a justifying righteousness, not a condemning one, as that of the law must be to the sinner who has it not. Hence the Lord Himself established the sanctions of the law in the most solemn way, by suffering unto death under its curse: He bore the penalty of the ungodly, of which substitution the Ten words knew nothing because they are law, and so to die is grace. There was no mitigation, much less annulling, of the law's authority. Divine righteousness provided One who could and would settle the whole question for the sinner with God. Nor this only; for God raised Christ from the dead. He was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification. He was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father; His moral being, His purposes, His truth, His love, His relationship, His glory, in short, was at stake in the grave of Christ. But God raised Him up, and set Him at His own right hand in heaven, as a part of His divine righteousness; for no seat, no reward inferior to that could suit the One who had vindicated God in all His majesty, holiness, grace, and truth, who had, so to speak, enabled God to carry out His precious design of justifying the ungodly, Himself just all the while. Thenceforward, to him who has faith, it is no longer a question of the law or of legal righteousness, which rested on the responsibility of man, but, Christ having gone down into death in atonement and thus glorified God to the uttermost, the ground is changed, and it becomes a question of God's righteousness. If man has been proved by the law to have brought forth wrongs, and only wrongs, God must have His rights, the very first of which is raising up Christ from the dead, and giving him glory. Hence the Holy Spirit is said, in John 16, to convince the world of righteousness; and this, not because Christ fulfilled that which we violated, but because He is gone to the Father, and is seen no more till He return in judgment. It is not righteousness on earth, but its heavenly course and character, in the ascension of Christ which is here spoken of. So, again, in 2 Cor. 5, it is in Christ glorified in heaven that we are made, or become, divine righteousness. It is plain, then, that the phrase, though no doubt embracing what Christians mean when they speak of Christ's righteousness imputed to us, is a far larger and more glorious thing. It includes not only that which glorified God on earth in living obedience, but the death of the cross, which, if it met the deepest need of the sinner, broke the power of Satan in his last stronghold, and laid the immutable foundation for God's grace to reign through righteousness. Thus, in Rom. 1:17, God's righteousness is said to be revealed in the gospel in contrast with man's righteousness claimed in the law; and being revealed, it is “from faith,” not from law-works; that is, it is a revelation on the principle of faith, not a work to be rendered on the ground of human responsibility. Therefore it is to “faith.” He that believes gets the blessing. In Rom. 3:21, 22, it is formally contrasted with anything under the law, though the law and the prophets witnessed respecting it. It is “God's righteousness without law,” by faith of Jesus Christ, and hence “towards all men,” in native tendency, but taking effect only “upon all them that believe.” It is here in special connection with redemption, and therefore it is added that God has set forth Christ a propitiation (or mercy-seat) through faith in His blood. See verses 24-26. In Rom. 10, it is shown to be incompatible with seeking to establish one's own righteousness, God's righteousness being complete, and the object of faith in Christ has to be submitted to, or we have no part or lot in it. 2 Cor. 5 rises higher, and shows what the saint is, according to the gospel of the glory of Christ—made divine righteousness in Him risen and glorified. Hence, in the latter epistle to the Philippians, that ripe sample and development of Christian experience, Paul, transported even to the last with this new and divine righteousness, shows us that, compared with it, he would not have the righteousness of the law if he could. For what was of the law had no glory longer in his eyes because of the glory that excelled—that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness of God through faith. (Phil. 3) Far from superseding practical godliness, this righteousness of God in Christ strikes deep roots in the heart, and springs up in a harvest of kindred fruit, which is by Jesus Christ to God's glory and praise. (Phil. 1:11.)

It is a singular fact that, while God used Rom. 1:17 to Luther's conversion, and we may say to the Reformation, neither he nor his companions, or their followers, ever apprehended the full truth conveyed by this blessed expression— “righteousness of God.” Hence it is habitually mistranslated in Luther's German Bible, where δικαιοσύμη θεοῦ is rendered “the righteousness which is available before God.” This, evidently, is far short of the truth; for a legal righteousness, if accomplished by man, would have availed before God. But God, in His grace, has accomplished in Christ and given an incomparably higher, i.e., a divine righteousness, and nothing less than this are we made in Christ. Perhaps the imperfect view entertained by the great German Reformer may account in large measure for the fluctuations in his enjoyment of peace. The same thing applies to most Protestants up to our day, even where they are devoted Christians, and perhaps from a similar cause; for they have advanced little, if at all, beyond the light on this head possessed by Luther 1 Cor. 15:29. What is meant by being “being baptized for the dead?”

For the due understanding of this verse, it is necessary to bear in mind that a parenthesis extends from verse 20 to 28 inclusively. The connection therefore, of verse 29 and seq. is with the reasoning which precedes that parenthetic revelation.

Now the apostle had already shown that “if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised; and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins: then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished,” closing with the further word, “if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” (verses 16—19.) Having thus proved the extreme gravity of denying the resurrection of dead persons, as overthrowing the foundation of salvation for the saints alive or dead, and neutralizing that hope which sustained those who now suffer for and with Christ, he interrupts the thread of argument by positive statement, “but now is Christ risen from the dead.” Then he draws out the glorious consequences of His victory as man—resurrection after His own pattern for those who are His at His coming, and a kingdom which He will not deliver to the Father till He has put all enemies under His feet, till the wicked dead are raised for judgment, and death is destroyed. “And when all things are subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.” For it is not here a question of His divine glory, but of a special authority vouchsafed to Him, as the exalted man, for a given purpose and time; this over, God (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) is all in all.

Having terminated this most instructive digression, which flowed out of the statement of Christ's resurrection, the apostle takes up the argument he had dropped, and referring to verse 16, he urges, “else what shall the baptized for the dead do?” “If dead [persons] rise not at all, why also are they baptized for them'?” And if he puts this case more strongly than in his first allusion to it, if he exposes the absurdity of people following the steps of those who are supposed to have perished, he in the next verses develops our present misery as Christians, and his own especially, “if in this life only we have hope in Christ.” Whether dead or living, the saints would be badly off indeed.

“To be baptized for the dead,” then, means to begin the Christian career, as the successors of persons whom some of them held to have died never to rise again. To be baptized for such, with any view or reference to them, was folly, if they were not to rise. To stand in jeopardy every hour, to die daily, to pass through such a conflict as the apostle had had with his Ephesian enemies, was to persist in madness, “if the dead rise not.” But if the dead are to rise and reign, if all outside them are merely enjoying the pleasures of sin for a season, which will give place to sure and stern and eternal judgment, the only wisdom was to enter their ranks, come what might to mow them down or harass in this life. God is only rightly known as the God of resurrection. Sin—this present evil world—tends to confuse and falsify all just thoughts of God, of His character, and His counsels. Resurrection, as revealed of Him, puts everything in its true place and light, and amongst others the suffering place of the Christian, from its commencement to its close here below. Resurrection is its key, its encouragement, and its reward.

Address to His Roman Catholic Brethren by a Minister of the Gospel

Brethren—The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ would ever make him to whom it was given anxious to declare it to others. I thankfully accept the time which the injury I have received has given me, by preventing my daily duty, as an opportunity of addressing myself to you. I have been deeply anxious concerning you from the day I came amongst you; and as I did not know how to leave the labor I was engaged in to turn to you, I cannot but see the hand of God in thus taking me from it for a while. I shall be glad to discharge in some measure my conscience towards you; but I desire to do much more, making known to you the riches and power of God's redeeming love.

You all know how carefully you have been kept and warned from intercourse with those who have been anxious to bring the word of God amongst you, and to show you what the Spirit of God has taught us concerning the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ; you are taught to look upon them as heretics, as if we were not in the right faith at all. I shall make no observation on these things, for the Spirit of the Lord Jesus has taught us in his word, and teaches the heart of every real disciple, that the true and only answer to these charges and this prejudice which they put into your hearts against us, is the exercise of unwearied patience and love towards you. And this is our duty, brethren, and I pray God to enable his servants ever thus to walk, that you may see the sincerity of our hearts towards you in love.

I shall now proceed to set before you those blessed truths of the Gospel, which we hold as the refuge and salvation of our souls. If you refuse altogether to inquire into them, I beg of you only to consider on what ground you will justify yourself if God shall call you in question for having despised his truth. Brethren, my heart's desire to God for you is, that you might know the peace and power of the Gospel of Christ which is kept from you. No other enmity have I against those who keep you in darkness but this, that they deprive you of the Gospel. Would to God they would hear it, and not be heaping up judgment for themselves against the day of wrath! Would to God they would! Gladly and thankfully would every zealous Christian see their work ended, by those who exercise authority over you themselves ministering the Gospel, joined in one mind with us in furthering the glory of the Savior, and our common hopes. But while they will not, it is the bounden duty of every one to whom the grace of the Gospel has been committed, as far as he is afforded opportunity, nay, to seek opportunity to warn you earnestly that you are kept in darkness, and to hold up the Gospel before you, that you may see the light. It is a work of unfeigned love, and I beseech you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to receive it so.

I join with my whole heart those who urge the reading the Scriptures; and I do not conceal from you, that I judge it the manifest work of Satan to keep them from you, and the proof of the power of Antichrist. And all the history of the church shows me this. But I shall not enter on this now. I shall first plainly state the blessed Gospel, in the hope that, by the blessing of God, its glory and its grace may reach some soul And if any amongst you be mourning over their sin, they may find the perfect comfort it was meant to give. And I shall then show you, that that, in which the priests make their boast over us, is an invention only tending to rob Christ of his glory, and you of your comfort, and I must add, to keep you in sin and impenitence. Forgive me this, brethren. Would to God I had opportunity of simply stating the Gospel to you, and you had ears to hear it with desire! Little need I then trouble you or myself with opposing what is contrary to it. But if your souls are endangered by it, is it anything but kindness to show you your danger?

I say then, brethren, that the Lord Jesus, by the one sacrifice of himself once offered, has totally and eternally put away sin, so that it shall never be imputed at all to those that believe on him; and that every repentant sinner who comes to Him is justified from all things, is accepted of God in Christ, with all the love he bears towards the Lord Jesus, for whose sake he does so accept us. That the glorious love of Almighty God has provided this deliverance for sinners who could not help themselves. You can understand, my friends, what comfort it would give to a soul really burthened and distressed with sin, who would earnestly desire favor and acceptance with God, against whom he had offended, to find that God Himself had freely put it all away and blotted it out. And He has, if you will believe the Son of God, and his Spirit speaking by the Apostles He has so loved us, while we were sinners, as to give His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life; so that being justified by faith in Him, we should have peace with God, and rejoice in hope of His glory. And it is Satan's own work to deny this—to say that God did not so love us—that Christ's sacrifice was not sufficient to put away sin—that His blood through faith in it does not cleanse from all sin. Brethren, what you want for your peace is to have your conscience cleansed from sin against God; and this the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ once slain for us alone can do and can do altogether. How much more, says the Apostle, shall the blood of Christ, who by the Holy Ghost offered Himself unspotted unto God, cleanse our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Heb. 9:14.

Brethren, I beseech you to lay this to heart—has the Son of God left the glory of his Father, and given his life for you, and will you say, I will not accept your freely offered love, I will not believe that you have wrought a full and perfect salvation for me? And if you do not believe that Christ has altogether and perfectly justified you from sin by his death, you deprive yourself of all the hope of the Gospel. For if you are not at peace with God, you can never have the hope of his glory; and if you are not perfectly justified from sin, it is impossible you can be at peace with God; nay, more, you can never serve God here with a free and willing mind, which is the only acceptable service. For if you do not know but that God is still angry with you, if you are still afraid of him, your service will be no real service, you will go on working in misery, in hope of gaining his favor. And this is what every sincere Roman Catholic is doing, adding work to work, in hope of turning away the anger of God, and gaining his favor; but this is all in vain, and really a great dishonor to God. God is love, and he has proved it by sending his Son to die for you, while you were in your sins. How freely, how devotedly, would you be able to serve God, if you knew that He loved you, and had done such wonderful things for you, and that you were fully accepted! And He has, my friends, or we should all have perished eternally.

Oh! that you knew this—oh that you would believe this—that you might know the comfort and the joy that there is in believing! And how is all this? By the sacrifice of Christ, the one great atonement for sin, the one glorious showing forth of the love of God to sinners; so that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, as Paul says; or as our Lord himself says, he who heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath life everlasting, and cornea not into judgment, but is passed from death to life. John 5:14.

“By one oblation,” says the Epistle to the Hebrews, “He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.” Heb. 10:14.

And what, on the denial of this, is promised instead, in which you boast yourselves? The pretended absolution of your priests and the sacrifice of the Mass.

The effect of these is not to bring the conscience to God, that it might feel the depth of heart-sin against Him, and seek for cleansing pardon and renewal of soul through the blood of the cross, and the power of the Spirit of God—but, by relieving your conscience at the moment from the fear it was under, to leave you at liberty to go on sinning again. But, my friends, need I solemnly warn you, do not your own consciences tell you, that this is an impious delusion? It takes away the fears of the wicked man, so as to let him go on in his sin, and leaves the poor humbled penitent with his conscience as burthened as ever; and because they are sincere in their sorrow for sin, some additional burthen of penance is put upon them. Oh! is this like the grace of God, or the truth of his love? Brethren, if anything would rouse Christian indignation to what is called religion amongst you, it is to see the wicked thus let go free, and still more, the heaping sorrow upon a contrite heart, putting them off with penances, which in their sincerity they will rigidly fulfill, without one ray of that comfort which the blessed God delights to give the humble. “For thus saith the high and lofty one that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy, I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.” But I tell the unrepenting sinner, they miserably deceive themselves, and they, and those that deceive them, shall find judgment for their iniquity; and I tell the humbled and contrite in the Lord's name, fear not, Christ has died for you, God himself has justified you, there is free and perfect remission by the death of Him who was delivered for your offenses. Nay more, that same Jesus, who died for you, is now at the right hand of God making intercession for you; able, as the Apostle says, “to save them forever, that come to God by Him, always living to make intercession for us.”

And this is another point where the great and tender love of God has been hid from you, I mean the mediation of Christ: you are led to look at Christ as a severe judge, or an unapproachable Lord, as if we had need of a mediator to come to him by. But let the humble soul remember that he is, through the infinite grace of God and his own love, man as well as God. Did he not prove to us, that he was ready, nay, desirous to receive all that come to him, by becoming one of ourselves, though without sin? For what did he pass through suffering and trial in the flesh, but to enter into all our sufferings with us, to understand them all, that they who believe might feel they had a friend who knew thoroughly all our wants and trials or will they say he has left off to feel for those, for whom he suffered so much, nay, whom he purchased at so costly a price? Brethren, I beseech your attention to this. The very glory of the Gospel, the way in which it has pleased the Father to glorify himself and his Son Jesus Christ, is by the Son's becoming mediator between God and man; and for this purpose, as the Apostle speaks, he became man—he acquainted himself with all the trials of those whom he redeemed to be his children, and whom he ever looks at as such, that he might succor them in all their difficulties. Heb. 2:11. The words of the Apostle are these: “For both he that sanctified, and they who are sanctified are all of one; for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren;” and again, “behold I and my children whom God hath given me.” Therefore, because the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He Himself also in like manner hath been partaker of the same, that through death he might destroy him who had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil. Wherefore it behooved him in all things to be made like unto his brethren, that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest before God, that he might be a propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that wherein he himself hath suffered and been tempted, He is able to “succor them also that are tempted.”

And it is not merely argument we have for these things. I quoted to you above, he was declared to be “always living to make intercession for us,” but the Apostle is plainer still.

“Having therefore a great high priest, that hath passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession; for we have not a high priest who cannot have compassion on our infirmities, but one tempted in all things like as we are, without sin. Let us go therefore with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace in seasonable aid.” In short, brethren, what could our hearts desire more, than that one who so loved us as to give his life for us; one who has a perfect sense and tender feeling for all our wants, by having felt them himself, should be now exercising that love for us at the right hand of the Father. And so John— “But if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the just, and he is the propitiation for our sins.'' Acquaint yourselves with the love and gracious tenderness of our glorified Lord. Taste and see that the Lord is gracious; dishonor him not in denying his willingness to receive you, as though he were a consuming fire; he is not except to those who deny him That Lord who is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, has not changed in his love since he said, “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Open your hearts before him, ye that seek for mercy: if he redeemed you when you were enemies by sin, how much more will he receive you now that he has reconciled you? But having gone on to say so much for the humble soul, I return to the sacrifice and priesthood.

Some, I know, totally to their own confusion, deny that Christ has thus perfectly delivered the conscience of believers, by putting away sin for them by the sacrifice of himself. But, perhaps, some of you will say, who denies it? I answer as to the comfort of your consciences, as to the faith of the soul in it, it is utterly denied to you; and your consciences in consequence are kept in bondage.

Christ (the Spirit of God has declared) has put away sin by the sacrifice of himself: if he has, what need of any other sacrifices? He hath made an end of sin, says Daniel, and brought in everlasting righteousness. But in your sacrifices there is a remembrance made of sin as not put away; for if Christ has reconciled us to God, and expiated sin for us, what is the repeated sacrifice for? Does it not directly and expressly take away from the glory of his sacrifice, and say it was not enough, that it was insufficient? And while it robs Christ of his glory, as if he had not reconciled us to God, it deprives us of our comfort by declaring his sacrifice insufficient to clear our consciences. And mark the utter folly of such a thought: as if the sacrifice which the Lord Jesus Christ offered himself in the shedding of his blood by the eternal Spirit was insufficient to put away sin, or to cleanse our consciences by faith in it; but the sacrifice which men offer without blood does that which the former did not do!

Ah! brethren, why will you be kept from the faith of the Son of God once dying for us?

I further show you, that it is contrary to express testimony of the Spirit of God, not merely as to the sacrifice, but as to their claim of being priests; and that both one and the other are in fact a denial of Christianity. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, (chapter 7:22) the Spirit of God thus testifies, “By so much is Jesus Christ made a surety of a better testament; and the others” (referring to the Jewish priests,) indeed “were made many priests, because by reason of death. they were not suffered to continue; but this” (that is, Christ as a priest), “for that he continueth forever, hath an everlasting priesthood, whereby he is able also to save forever them that come to God by him, always living to make intercession for us, for it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens; who needeth not daily [as the other Priests], to offer sacrifices, first, for his own sins, and then for the people's; for this he did once in offering himself.” Now, brethren, if you feel any interest in how you may rightly come to God, if this be the express teaching of the Spirit of God, is not the claim of priesthood, and the offering of sacrifice, which is the proper office of a priest, (Heb. 5:1) directly opposed to the truth of the Gospel, and the mind of the Holy Ghost?

It is fitting, that we Christians should have a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separate from sinners, made higher than the heavens, who needeth not daily to offer sacrifices, for this he did once in offering himself. What room does this leave to one who believes in it, that accepts the mercies of God in His Son, set forth by the Holy Ghost, to look for constantly repeated sacrifices, and a multitude of priests on earth? For if that which the Holy Ghost declares to be fitting has been done, as it certainly has, there can be no truth in that which is contrary to it; and the supporting the earthly priesthood and sacrifice is not only against the honor, but is really a denial, of the sacrifice and priesthood of the Lord Jesus our Savior; which is the hope, the support, the comfort, of every believer in him, and the blessed earnest of their being with him in glory, seeing, as the Apostle speaks, Jesus, in entering into the heavens, has entered for us as a forerunner.

In a word, Jesus Christ is the priest of the Christian Church and its sacrifice; nor is there the least ground whatever given by God, for any man to assume the character of a priest, that is, a sacrificer; and whoever does it, does it on his own authority, and in opposition to God and his Christ.

The repetition of the sacrifice shows its total inefficiency to cleanse the conscience from sin. By this the Apostle shows the inefficacy of the Jewish sacrifices, and afterward asserts that to which I would earnestly entreat your attention, as the great center of truth in this matter—I mean, the perfect remission of sins, wrought for believers by the death of Christ. Speaking of the sacrifices under the law, he says (Heb. 10:1), “The law, by the self-same sacrifice which they offer continually every year, can never make the corners thereunto perfect; for then they would have ceased to be offered, because the worshippers once purged would have no conscience of sin any longer; but in them there is made a commemoration of sins every year;” and then verse 10, “In the which will” (i.e. of God) “we are sanctified by the oblation of the body of Jesus Christ once.” And again, verse 12, “But this man offering one sacrifice for sins, forever sitteth on the right hand of God.” Verse 14, “For by one oblation he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified; and the Holy Ghost doth also testify this to us; for after that he said, and this is the testament which I will make unto them after those days, saith the Lord, I will give my laws in their hearts, and in their minds will I write them, and their sins and iniquities I will remember no more. Now, where there is remission of these, there is no more an oblation for sin.”

So that, my friends, either there is not remission of sins by Jesus Christ, or there is no more oblation for sin, and if the Holy Ghost hath testified truly that there is remission of sins by Jesus Christ, and that the sins and iniquities of those within his testament are remembered no more; then the sacrifice which you pretend to offer for sin is false, and not merely a harmless error, but one amounting to a denial of the remission of sins by Jesus Christ, the preaching of which in his name was the great commission given to the Apostles. Luke 24:47.

I shall copy another passage without any observation: I speak as unto wise men; judge ye what is said. The Apostle had said, (Heb. 9:22) “Without shedding of blood is no remission of sins,” and then (verse 24) “For Jesus is not entered into the holies made with hands, the patterns of the true, but into heaven itself, that he may appear now in the presence of God for us. Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holiest every year with the blood of others, for then he ought to have suffered often from the beginning of the world; but now once at the end of ages he hath appeared for the destruction of sin by the sacrifice of himself. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment, so also Christ was offered once to exhaust the sins of many. The second time he shall appear without sin, to them that expect him unto salvation.”

In a word, my friends, (Rom. 5:19) “as by the disobedience of one man many were made sinners, so also by the obedience of one man many shall be made just;” and I solemnly warn you, in the name of him who shall judge the quick and the dead, that if you are not partakers in the righteousness of Christ, you have no hope in you; all your works are vain delusions, unacceptable, nay, an abomination to God; they can give you no peace, nor have they any fruit unto life eternal, while you despise the work which God has himself wrought in the gift of his own Son.

Brethren, brethren, my heart's desire would be to preach the Gospel simply to you, and not touch—why should I desire it?—upon those things in which you are kept in error. My own hope and comfort, and, through the mercy of God, my joy too (blessed forever be his holy name, who hath called me in his mercy to the faith of his Son,) is in the knowledge of the perfect and gracious salvation wrought by Jesus Christ, so that all fear is taken from him that believeth; and in the knowledge we are given of the glory of the Lord, of God our Savior in it. Of this I earnestly desire that you may be partakers; we are all equally unworthy of it; it is free grace to all. The prayer of my soul is offered up to God for you, that through that grace, you may be brought to the knowledge of salvation by faith in Christ Jesus. But, brethren, it is an awful time for you; your errors in ignorance would be freely forgiven and put out of remembrance, if you repent and believe the Gospel. But judgment comes upon those, who when “light is come into the world, love darkness rather than light.” John 3:19. Read the whole chapter down to this, The fear of men will be no excuse in that day; for if you had thought rightly of God, you would rather have feared him. I have anxiously, according to the grace given to me, thought of the state you are in, and the testimony of the Spirit of God in his word concerning you. And I earnestly and affectionately entreat you to consider your own souls, and see what real ground you have for hope of acceptance, which you know God sanctions: you will find you have none, and that the rejection of the Gospel now declared to you is the rejection of your salvation.

You are in the extremity of danger, where you are, of being involved in the judgment which shall fall upon those, who, from willful corruption of the truth, will have their portion appointed with unbelievers: and if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

May God Almighty, by the power of the Spirit of truth, deliver you from the power of darkness, and lead you into all truth, that you may know the glory of his grace, whereby he has made us accepted in the beloved, aged give you a place in the flock of the great Shepherd, who loved us, and gave himself for us, and liveth for evermore, our great and merciful high priest.

Your affectionate friend and servant in Christ Jesus, J: N. DARBY.

I have purposely refrained from controverting errors; but you will find all those things which are peculiar to your system tend to the robbing Christ of his glory, and the denial of the completeness of his work: and this, if any wish, can be shown them. Where I have made any direct quotations, I have quoted from the Douay to satisfy you; in your translation and ours the sense was the same.

Second Address to His Roman Catholic Brethren by a Minister of the Gospel: Part 1

Men And Brethren,

I consider often within myself, when I write these things to you, what motive have I for doing it? Ah! if you can find any but love to Christ and your souls, that, by the truth, coming to Christ, you may find the holy liberty of Christian obedience, then blame me. I consider further—is the way in which I do it according to the will of God and the Spirit of Jesus Christ? If you can show me that in anything it is not, I will acknowledge it with sorrow.

In my intercourse with you I am conscious of no fault, unless it be not having spoken the truth to you in love sooner: I pray you to forgive me this—I will endeavor to repair it towards you.

Yet is it in no righteousness of my own, brethren, I am or seek to be justified, but in the righteousness of God by faith in Jesus Christ. I know that some of you count me to have turned your enemy, because I tell you the truth—show me wherein. It is because I love you, and would have you to know the blessings of Christ's grace, that I am willing to sacrifice my good name amongst you, that I may win your souls for Christ. That is my whole and sole desire: my allegiance is to Christ; the rule of my faith, the word of the living God. My object is in no way to gain proselytes to any outward human system, but to bring you (if God will please to accept and bless my humble endeavor), in the acknowledgment of sin, to the truth of God, and the pure faith of the gospel, your souls to a hearty confession of it unto salvation, and your lives unto the way of his will, and the rejection of everything that is contrary to it.

Here, brethren, I find the rest of my own soul, which was once as far from God, and consequently without hope, as any of you, till I found the good Shepherd, Christ Jesus, who gave His life for the sheep, and has gathered me, as I trust undoubtingly, into His fold, and whose best and proper mercy and grace I count it, till He gather me to Himself, or rather while we wait for His appearing, to be the humble instrument of gathering others into the same place of security and blessing.

I am led to some of these remarks by the little book called “Reasons which Roman Catholics offer why they cannot conform to the Protestant religion.” I shall make some observations on these, in the hope that they may lead you to inquire diligently on what ground the hope of your souls rests. One reason given is the impossibility of the Church of Christ erring from the true faith; and I know this weighs much with many sincere persons amongst you. Now, brethren, I freely admit this, for rightly understood as to the true Church, it is a self-evident truth; for this reason, that where there is no true faith, there could be no Church, for the Church thus understood is properly an assembly of believers, that is, of people that have a true faith. And I further freely admit, as the promise on which my soul rests, that from Christ's first coming in the flesh, till His second coming in His glory, there undoubtedly has been and will be such a company of believers, and this company of believers are all witnesses to the faith, and maintain in and to the world the profession of faith, and thus the honor of the Redeemer's name! And this is what the Apostle Paul means by the Church of God being the pillar and ground of the faith. And my assurance of this, which makes me full of joy and gratitude, is rested on the promise of God in His word, (and its actual fulfillment at this day,) and, amongst others, on the very texts given in the little book I have mentioned: so that they are proving what I joyfully confess and praise God for. And more, brethren, I say that it is the Church of Christ who have the only hope of salvation; so that this is not the question between us at all. The question is, who is able to say that he is in that Church, and keeping the sayings of the great Head of it? So that they should show, which they do not, and it is absolutely impossible that they should do, that the Church of Rome, and none else, is the Church of Christ. On the contrary, brethren, I affirm, and call upon you to search the Scriptures whether it be so or not, that every true believer is a member of Christ, that is, one of His true Church; as the Lord Christ says Himself, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman." And here I think I am bound to notice an argument which is given publicly amongst you, and which I heard also from one of yourselves, and that is this— “If you say 'that every one that is a true believer in Christ will be saved, why may I not stay in the Church of Rome and still be saved by being a true believer; especially as your divines say that a man can be saved as a Roman Catholic, and we say that he cannot be safe as a Protestant!”

Now I must say, that this is not like the objection of one that fears God, for such an one seeks with a willing heart what the whole will of God is; and does not say, if I am safe here, why should I not stay? And, brethren, I should have awful fears for the safety of a soul that should willfully use this argument at all, instead of seeking to follow Christ with all his heart, in whatever He showed him to do: it is the spirit of a true believer to say, “Lo, we have left all and followed thee;" so that a person cannot be safe willfully continuing in that which is contrary to the truth and will of God, for every true believer takes the will of God as the rule of all he does; so that if a man continues in what he sees to be contrary to it, he is not a true believer. And I honestly confess to you, that this seems to me not only an unsound but a very wicked argument.

The reason then, why it does behoove men to separate themselves from the communion of the Church of Rome, is this one, given by our Lord Himself, that they make the word of God void, and that their worship is vain, because they teach for doctrines the commandments of men. You say you hold the fundamentals; if you do, this proves nothing, for, as James says, “The devils believe and tremble." The question in which your souls are concerned is—Have you believed the Gospel of the Son of God with the heart unto righteousness?

But our Lord declares that there is such a thing as making void the commandments of God by traditions: it was this very thing that our Lord charged upon the Jewish teachers. You boast in traditions: should not this sentence of our Lord's teach you to reflect on such a boast! And accordingly, what is looked for from a Roman Catholic, who desires to become a Protestant, is to renounce those doctrines and commandments which have no warrant in the word of God, avowing his faith in that which is found there, and to receive the word of God as the warrant of his faith, and Christ himself as the only hope of his soul. And the name of Protestant was received from protesting against practices contrary to his will and goodness—against laying on men's consciences the burthen of things which God had not laid, and thereby keeping them from the knowledge of the exceeding riches of God's grace, in His kindness towards us by Christ Jesus. And thus making Him seem to men a hard Master, instead of a tender Father to those that believe in Him. As the Scripture says, “Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish aught from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you." Again, “Every word of God is pure. He is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Add thou not unto his words, lest He reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.

They teach things, brethren, which have no warrant in the word of God, and (by offering remedies for sin which God has not offered, and therefore will not accept) prevent men from being led to true repentance and faith in Christ Jesus for remission of sins and salvation, which is expressly offered by God as the remedy for sin, and the only one. There is therefore, in the present doctrines of the Church of Rome, no real remission of sins at all; and not only so, but it is expressly denied. And they say that the doctrine which God has set forth in His word about it, tends—dreadful thought!—to sin. The doctrines they teach, and the character they assume—I speak it, brethren, with deep sorrow, directly dishonor the Lord that bought us with the price of His own most precious blood, by assuming to themselves the honor and authority which belong to Him alone, whose glory is the believer's satisfaction.

They teach and command things which have not only no warrant, but are in truth contrary to the word of God.

You who have ears to hear are called upon by the voice of the Lord's love to separate yourselves from them, that you may find the true grace and truth of the Gospel for your soul, and lest the judgment and plagues which will come upon them for these things should find you amongst them, and fall upon you also.

Brethren, I presume not to say when that hour of judgment will come. It will come suddenly and with terror upon those who have lived carelessly and at ease, saying, We shall see no sorrow—we are safe. But I could, brethren, earnestly desire to see you, having believed the testimony of God, watching as men prepared for your Lord, as those that are of the day, so that it should not come upon you unawares, but “when these things begin to come to pass,” you may be among those who shall “lift up their heads, because their redemption draweth nigh;” who have put their trust in Christ, and the promises of God in Him, so that when He appears, ye may rejoice before Him with exceeding joy. Oh! how differently will that man feel, who has trusted in His word and promise, and acted upon faith in Him alone, when He shall appear, from one, who not relying upon His word, that He would save all that trust in Him, has trusted in his own works, has put his hope in man, and man's word, and man's work.

Look unto Him, I beseech you, that cares for your souls, while He calls, “Seek ye the Lord, while he may be found, and call upon him while he is nigh. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." And if it bring reproach upon you, and trouble, dearest brethren, and they cast out your name as evil, is not this very thing rather a mark of truth! “For all,” says the apostle, “that will live godly in Christ Jesus, will suffer persecution:" nay, as our Lord Himself said, “Rejoice and be exceeding glad (that is if ye suffer as witnesses of God's truth), for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you." And when Paul went round the churches he had planted among the Gentiles, he went “confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God,"

I say, then, that the whole hope of the Gospel is denied by the doctrines of the Church of Rome—I mean the free, full, entire redemption purchased for us by the blood-shedding of Christ, and laid hold on by faith; that consequently there is no saving faith amongst you at all; and this is why I am in earnest in speaking to you on the subject. I own to you, brethren, that though I was firmly convinced that you were utterly in the wrong in every point in which I was acquainted with the differences between us, I never felt the deep necessity that now lay upon you of coming to Christ out of the system of Popery, as I do now. I entreat every one, with my whole soul, who loves our Lord Jesus Christ and his honor, to come out from among them and be separate. I would lead you to the discovery that you have not Christ amongst you, and that you are given “another Gospel” than that which the Lord and the Apostles preached, “which is not another, but there are some that trouble you, subverting your souls;” but the Lord will judge them in his own time, when he hath gathered his own sheep. I know not, brethren, the hour when the Lord will call me, and I solemnly assure you, that you will find in Christ, and in Christ alone, by faith in Him, that which your priests falsely pretend to give you, and yet which none of you have—the solid comfort of Christ's Gospel. I ask you if you have, yourselves; and I tell you it is expressly promised in God's word, and the power of it is brought to a believer's soul by the Spirit promised to them that believe in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. Why will they not even let you read it? Brethren, they keep you in bondage, because you know not the glorious promises of the Father of mercies; and they are enemies, and try to make you enemies of all that have them; but the voice of the Gospel is gone abroad, and His sheep will hear it: yes, brethren, salvation by the blood of the Lamb of God, free, undeserved—reconciliation to God by the death of His own Son, come amongst us in the flesh to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, is proclaimed, and He will see of the travail of His soul, and be satisfied. His own word shall not fail— “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.” Will you count yourselves unworthy of eternal life Hear, I beseech you, brethren, and save yourselves from this untoward generation, who hate and oppose the knowledge of Christ by the Gospel. Ask any real believer of any denomination, of the Established Church, of the Presbyterians, of the Independents, or by whatever name they may be called; and see if they do not agree in the faith, that “the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin;” but why do I say, ask a real believer?—Ask the word of God, in which they find the promises on which their faith is founded. What infatuation is it of your priests, under the name of Christianity, to deny all the efficacy of God's promises in the Gospel!—the cleansing of the blood of Jesus Christ, and the renewing, enlightening power of the Holy Ghost, and to lead you—to what? To that which is not to be found in His word, and has no warrant but the word of men like yourselves: if they can show any authority for it, it were all well; but they show none but of men like themselves, or perhaps none at all; and they will not suffer you to have God's word to see if it be there or not. Oh! they are heaping up wrath against the day of wrath in a way they little know. They say you cannot understand it, and yet the Lord says, “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight." And he declares, that He Himself was anointed to preach the Gospel to the poor; and who were His disciples?—Were they rich or poor? They were fishermen; and I tell you why they understood it—they were taught of God: as it is written, “They shall be all taught of God: whosoever, therefore, hath heard and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me." The Jews of that day said they were the only children of God, and yet those only who left them and came to Jesus, were saved from the judgment that came on their nation. Brethren, the Lord Jesus is not now amongst us in the flesh, but the Scriptures of God declare the truth and power of His coming in the flesh; and they keep these from you. They hide the glory of His free and glorious salvation to the utmost of their power; and when those actuated by the Spirit of truth would declare it to you in love, and appeal to these Scriptures, they do all they can to prevent your hearing the one or searching the other. Why could not you understand when you read it by the teaching of God, as well as the poor of that day, when they heard it by the teaching of God? —Is God less powerful, or less near us than He was? and so far from saying that the Jews could not understand the Scriptures, He says the greatest of all wonders would fail of convincing them if the Scriptures did. “If they hear not Moses and the prophets” —that is the Scriptures of the Old Testament, which was what the Jews had— “neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."

Hear too what Paul says— “It is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise?—Where is the scribe?—Where is the disputer of this world?—Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For the Jews require a sign” —as your teachers ask for miracles— “and the Greeks seek after wisdom: but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God"—them which are called, brethren, when the power of Christ's voice reaches the heart so that it feels the call. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is proclaimed to you: some are daily hearing the voice of the good Shepherd: who among you will follow Him, and who will count himself unworthy of eternal life? “By me (says he) if any man enter in, he shall go in and out and find pasture; and I will give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no man shall be able to pluck them out of His hand." Mark by me, as he says, “Come unto me." We preach to you Christ, brethren—Christ crucified, the good Shepherd laying down his life for the sheep—we preached Christ all in all, as Paul preached him. What will they add to him? Can the offerings of men, or the works of men, add to Christ? Or has he laid down his life in vain, and done half his work? You say you believe in Christ; yet those that lead you deny his work, the power and efficacy of his blood to cleanse from all sin! What!—I repeat it, brethren—the blood of the only-begotten Son of God, come in the flesh for our sakes, be insufficient, and your priests can do what He cannot!—Oh! here is the iniquity of these men keeping the sheep of the great Shepherd from the comfort of his love. I will copy for you a passage in the Scripture, which declares his saving love in his own words— “Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep: to him the porter openeth, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out; and when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice; and a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him, for they know not the voice of strangers.” — “Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep: all that ever came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. The thief cometh not but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy; I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. I am the good Shepherd: the good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. I am the good Shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine: as the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.” Again— “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father which gave them me is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are one.”

Oh! brethren, dearly beloved, I pour out my heart to God for you, and I know that He hears my prayer; and herein I find comfort in the thought of declaring these things to you, that you should be gathered unto Him. Brethren, there is not one doctrine of those which are peculiar to yourselves, on which you are taught to depend for your souls for present grace or future glory, that has the least warrant of God's word: and, moreover, there is not one of them which is not the invention of Satan to hinder your souls from coming to Christ. Ask those who have had their eyes opened by reading the Scriptures, whether they found them there, or free salvation by Christ? Nay, read rather, yourselves, dear brethren, and see; and oh! when you see, confess Him with your mouth unto salvation, for His own love's sake, for the sake of your brethren who may be still in darkness, and as you would find mercy yourselves in that day.

I shall go on to mention some things, not for their own sake, but because they use them to keep you in darkness.

They tell you Luther was a bad man. How does that change the truth of the Gospel? I firmly believe I shall meet Luther in heaven, through the free grace of God: but, brethren, did he tell the great truths of the Gospel, which had been hidden or corrupted? But though I have not the least doubt that his name was written in heaven, our faith is in no way founded in him, but in Scripture, where his was in all its main points founded; and the reading of which made him, by the teaching of God, wise unto salvation, as they will every one partaker of the same grace, and that by leading him to that entire and unmixed dependence upon Christ, which can alone give peace to the soul “Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you;” even the full treasure of the unsearchable riches of Christ, freely, “without money and without price,” as says the word of the Lord: “Ho! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, come buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why spend ye your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which satisfieth not?"

Brethren, I had thought of some arguments as to this matter, but I will not lead your souls from the word of the living God the Savior, to human arguments: I pledge myself to satisfy, out of the word of God, every one who in sincerity of heart will take the word of God for his authority: and, brethren, will you dare to deny the authority of the Word of God? Your teachers wickedly say, that Luther held communion with Satan; tempted by Satan, no doubt, he was; but you know, brethren, this is the lot of every man, as it was, for our sakes, of the sinless Son of Man himself. For the rest, neither you nor I are his judge: and more, if they loved the truth, they would not, if there were faults in the teachers of it, seek to overthrow the truth by means of those faults: if they loved God's word, they would not defame the instruments by which God has made it known; and, I must add, brethren, that denouncing the enemies of God's truth and righteousness where they show themselves such, in a spirit of zealous faith, is not contrary to Christian faith.

(To be continued)

Second Address to His Roman Catholic Brethren by a Minister of the Gospel: Part 2

Luther honored the truth and loved it, and we love him because he loved it, and the Author and Giver of it—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and we are thankful to God on his account: he was a man, and we accordingly reject everything he held which we do not find according to the truth of God: acting according to the direction of the apostle, “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." And so far from asking you to believe Luther, we entreat you to trust in no man implicitly. And it was to the Scriptures Luther and his companions appealed, and to which we appeal, and by which God will judge us all at the last day. If you accept grace, He will deal with you accordingly; you will be freely forgiven; your sins blotted out and remembered no more; and you will find, what you have trusted in, that God is love. If you will persist in seeking to be saved by your works, God will judge you accordingly, and you will be found wanting in that day; for “in his sight shall no man living be justified.” But it was not flesh and blood, much less the enemy of all truth, that made Luther cleave to and preach the Scriptures of truth. And if you read them, you will find so, to your souls' everlasting comfort. Or if the gospel of eternal love, and the truth in them be hid, when they are brought before you, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of this world hath blinded the hearts of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine into them.

Moreover, brethren, Luther was not alone, but it pleased the God of all grace to raise up, in order to give to the world the fullest testimony that it was his own work, at the very same time, at a distant place, the monastery of Einsedeln, a member of that monastery, named Zuingle, to preach the truths of the Gospel, and protest against the wickedness of the Pope and practices of Rome. And God was pleased so to order it, that these two men, Zuingle and Luther, were never united in sentiment to the day of their death. And so far was Luther from agreeing with Zuingle in his opinion on one point, that he was so angry with him about it that he would never join churches with him. And the truth is, that it rather seems that Zuingle began to preach the Gospel before Luther. The cause of the Reformation was God's mercy and grace, the time for which was now fully come; the occasion of it, under God's providence, was this: Pope Leo the Tenth wanted to finish a very splendid church in Rome, commonly called St. Peter's: and in order to raise money for it, he set indulgences for sin to sale without limit. And this it was which made Luther and Zuingle both at the same time begin to protest against the conduct of the church: though Luther at first did not charge the Pope with it, but only preached against the indulgences. When they tried to silence him, he went on to search the Scriptures in order to defend himself, and find out Where the truth of the matter lay; and there he found that the Papacy of Rome had no foundation for its assumed authority, and afterward was persuaded that it was indeed that Babylon which it is expressly foretold should rise in the Christian Church, and corrupt everything herself, and persecute all faithful witnesses to God's truth. Would to God, brethren, and it is my earnest prayer and trust, that many amongst you may be led by the same means of searching the Scriptures to discover the same truths; and above all, that your souls may find their way by the teaching of God's Spirit, by the means of God's word, to the full power of eternal life and unfeigned holiness of heart and life through the knowledge of Jesus Christ therein revealed; that you may enter with unmixed joy into the presence of your God.

I have added, brethren, a few distinct texts, which show in direct terms the falseness of the doctrines on which you have been taught to depend. They do not deny that the Scriptures are the word of God. And then judge you, whether those men are to be trusted who teach those things, and keep the Scriptures from you, which they must own to be true.

They say that men who are forgiven their sins must nevertheless pass through the fire of Purgatory, in order to be cleansed from them.

The Scripture says, “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin."

They say that men ought to address the Virgin Mary and the Saints as Mediators.

The Scripture says, “There is one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus."

They say that the Mass is a propitiatory sacrifice, an offering or oblation for the sins of the quick and the dead.

The Scriptures say, that “by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified” —that remission of sins is obtained by the new covenant in his blood; and that “where remission of these is, there is no more an offering or oblation for sin."

They say that salvation is obtained by men's works.

The Scriptures say, “By grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast."

I take notice of these here, not to enter further upon them as points of controversy; and indeed where the Scripture has plainly spoken on a subject, I do not see what room there is for controversy, but to lead you to this point: the priests would have you trust blindly in them; at the same time they cannot deny that the Scriptures—take your own Douay, I am content—are the word of the living God. Now I ask you, do they not teach you the things I have mentioned I and are not the Scriptures, your own Scriptures, flat contrary? How can you give the salvation of your souls into the hands of men who acknowledge, the Scriptures to be the word of God, and yet teach things flatly against them? But not to show you error merely, and what you have reason to distrust, but to set before you truths upon which your souls may rest, if God shall give mercy to you that this may reach you, and open your hearts to the acknowledging the truth, I add-

Christ, and Christ alone, is the true sacrifice.

Christ, and Christ alone, is the great High Priest.

Christ, and Christ alone, is the Mediator between God and man.

Christ, and Christ alone, is our righteousness in the sight of God.

Christ, and Christ alone, is our perfect pattern.

Christ, and Christ alone, is the great Head of the Church, and the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls.

Christ, and Christ alone, is the true vine, in which every branch finds life; while every believer incorporated into His mystical body by faith and baptism, thus by the communion of his Spirit becomes one with Him, and partaking of His fullness according to the measure of the gift of God, fulfills in his sphere the same offices which he fills as the first-born amongst many brethren, ministering to the completeness and perfection of His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all.

Brethren, the Scriptures contain all things necessary to your salvation, because they reveal the fullness of Christ Jesus, “God manifest in the flesh.”

The Apostle Paul says, “By grace ye are saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast; for we are God's workmanship, created again in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”

What we want, then, is to know the way of salvation, and how to be perfected in good works, in which believers walk.

Both are found in Christ by faith-He is our Savior and our pattern.

[The author would now say, no doubt, by the baptism of the Spirit.-ED.]

Both are revealed in the Scriptures, as to which Paul says to Timothy, “From a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.”

Further, brethren, that the minds of any of you who love the truth, may be undeceived, I add some farther points.

First—You rely upon being Catholic. Catholic means, as your catechism, I believe, tells you, universal, and that it is universal in different ways.

Brethren, the fact is, the Church of Rome is universal in none, except by the antichristian assumption by the Pope of what belongs to Christ alone. A large portion of professing Christians have no communion with the Church of Rome, and have never, at any period, admitted its supremacy. Its faith is not universal; it totally differs from, and is opposed to, “the faith once delivered to the saints;” and for this we appeal to the Scriptures, which they cannot deny contain that faith.

Not only, brethren, are they opposed to the Scriptures, but the articles which we renounce have been added to the creed, in express defiance of the authority of the primitive Church itself. In the year 449, the Third General Council, which sat at Ephesus to maintain the truth against heresies, expressly decreed, that no innovation should be made on the creed then settled. In the eighth century after Christ, Pope Leo the Third wrote to his Legate, (who was attending assemblies of German and French Bishops,) in answer to an inquiry from him, stating, that no addition should be permitted to be made in the creed, which the French and German Bishops were thinking of making; and he set up, out of the archives at Rome, silver tablets in St. Peter's and St. Paul's, with the creed engraved on them, as a memorial of what it was then, for the very purpose that nothing should be changed or added. This happened a thousand years ago. Now the great difference between the Greek Church (which denies the supremacy of Rome, and is separated from it) and the Roman (which calls itself Catholic) is the addition which this tablet was put up to prevent, and which the Greeks have not agreed to the insertion of. And most of the great points in which we, who deny both the Catholicity and the Supremacy of the Church of Rome, differ from you, are, twelve new points added at the time of the Reformation to the creed by Pope Pius the Fourth and the Council of Trent. So that, far from their being Catholic in point of faith, we are sanctioned in our separation from them, not only by the Scriptures, which these new doctrines of theirs are quite contrary to; but they are, in adding them to the creed and attempting to impose them on us, expressly condemned by a General Council, which they receive and declare to be of divine authority, which sat fourteen hundred years ago. And the Greek Church, which they also condemn as schismatics, to say the least, are justified in their separation by the authority of one of their own Popes, who took the pains of fixing up a silver tablet to prevent that which after Popes did or acquiesced in. So utterly unfounded are they in the pretensions which they set up in order to keep you in bondage.

And this fact is as strong against their pretense of Infallibility as Catholicity; for we have the Church, four or five hundred years after Christ, expressly decreeing that no article shall be added; and we have those who call themselves the Church, fifteen or sixteen hundred years after Christ, adding twelve articles as matters of faith, and rejecting all who deny them. Was the Church in the first ages, or the Church of Rome at the Reformation, in the right? or how can that be infallible which contradicts itself? But the true Catholic Church, brethren, that seed of God, which shall indeed never fail, the body of Christ, the real communion of saints, the one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, subsists in the company of true believers, in every age united to the great Head, Christ Jesus, by His Spirit dwelling in them, and incorporating them into His mystical body. And while the power of the Lord lasts, even to the end of the world, while the influences of the divine Spirit show to souls His glory in hope, so long will there be a Church upon earth. But to say that this is any particular communion or body of professing Christians (and that too without inquiring whether they hold the faith once delivered to the saints) is nothing else but the spirit of Antichrist.

And now, brethren, see what sort of arguments they use to keep you still in bondage.

Luther did not give scriptural advice in some instances; therefore do not you read the Scriptures, which would have hindered him giving the advice if he had read them properly. Isaiah that sound reason?

Again, King Henry the Eighth was a bad man, and acted contrary to good morals: therefore do not read those Scriptures which condemn his immorality. What reason is there in such an argument as that? Do we say that all Protestants are good men, or under the vital influence of the Spirit of God? Alas! no, brethren; but we do say, that they have the truth and faith and kingdom of God amongst them. But the fact is, Henry the Eighth, though he was an instrument in the hand of God to overthrow Popery in England, never, I believe, even to the time of his death, cordially submitted to Protestant truth, and during some part of his life burnt people for believing it, even after he had thrown off Popery. For Henry the Eighth, although we leave him to God's final judgment, was corrupted by power, and wealth, and pleasure, so as to love his own will rather than either Popery or Protestantism; and the fact is, we have nothing to do with him, nor will his crimes be any answer for your souls in the day of judgment.

The point, brethren, is this—there are certain doctrines in which the faith and hopes of a professor of the Christian religion are deeply concerned. You are told you ought to believe these doctrines. We say there is no foundation for them, and not only so, but that the belief in them precludes the faith by which we find the power and comfort of the gospel of the Son of God come in the flesh; and we appeal to the Scriptures, confessed by all to be inspired and given to us by God for our edification in the truth, written by apostles and evangelists commissioned by God, so that they might say, and none could deny, “He that is of God heareth us.” And we declare to you as honest men, that a person reading them with the assistance of God's grace will find none of these doctrines in them, but what is entirely inconsistent with them, and your teachers while they dare not deny that the Scriptures do contain the truth of God, will not let you read them to see whether these things be so, as we say; while we know that the Bereans are expressly commended for so doing: “they were more noble, searching the Scriptures daily whether those things were so."

Another common difficulty in the mind of a person beginning to see the truth of God, amongst you, is this Protestant faith is a new faith; or, as they are accustomed to say, it came 1500 years too late. I mention these arguments as things which might hinder a sincere soul from receiving the truth. They will tell you, the first religion must be the right one. Undoubtedly, brethren, it must; the first religion must be the right one, and the only one, not because it is the first, but as coming from the Lord. And that is exactly the ground we go upon. And it must be so for this reason, that that is the true religion which came from God Himself—in a word, the only true religion is that which was “once delivered to the saints,” which came from the lips of Christ and His apostles—so much so indeed that Paul is bold to say, that he wished “they were cut off that troubled the Galatians, perverting the gospel of Christ. But,” says he, “though we, or an angel from God, should preach to you any other gospel than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel than that ye have received, let him be accursed." And now, brethren. where will you find the first religion? Hear Paul — “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son:” and then, after declaring the glory of the Son of God, he goes on, “Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him, God also bearing them witness both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?” So that we may put the case thus: we agree that the first doctrines are the true ones, as coming from Christ and the inspired apostles: the question is, how we are to find what they are? You take it at the priests' word, who come 1800 years after them. We appeal to the Scriptures, which record Christ's sayings, as none of you deny, and contain the apostles' writings, as none of you deny: is not this a good way of finding out what that first religion was which they taught? And not only do we show that we use the right way to follow the first religion, which I agree we are bound to do; but we show you as a matter of direct history, that they have added twelve articles to the creed which was in use in the primitive or old church, and which is Commonly called the Nicene Creed. I take for granted you know the creed. Now will you tell me what there is in that about the Virgin Mary, or that the saints are mediators? Ought not this to make you doubt whether you are not misled in being made to believe things which are not in the creed, when they refuse you the Scriptures to see if they are there; and when, too, a General Council prohibited any new creed to be made, beside what is called the Nicene Creed?

There is one thing more, brethren (which I should never mention; I should in truth be ashamed to mention it, but that it is commonly said amongst you) that is, that St. Peter stands at the gate of heaven with the keys, and lets in the Romanists as belonging to the true Church, and keeps out other people. Now, brethren, you will not deny that, as Paul says, “we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad." Keep this in mind: good and bad, we are all to stand at the judgment-seat of Christ. Now this is quite out of the question if that be true about Peter; for, according to that, they will never get to the judgment-seat of Christ, or perhaps you will say it is after they have been judged. But then Peter need not be there at all, for those that the Lord rejects He sends away to hell: as it is written, “Depart ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."

Brethren, I have spoken of these things for your soul's sake, with sorrow of heart. We are all sinners, and under just judgment in the sight of a holy God, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity; nor can there be any sound, real hope to see His face, unless we are cleansed from all sin. It is the very truth and purpose of the gospel to assure us, that there is perfect and entire remission of them in Christ Jesus, for those that believe in Him, and that His blood cleanses from all sin; and also this further blessing to those who by the work of His grace have been brought to desire holiness, that He “will put his law into our hearts, and write it in our minds.” Instead of saying to us, “If you do not do so and so, to keep my law, you will be condemned;” he says, “I have mercy upon you; I will put the love of my law in your hearts; I will give you a new heart; and your sins and iniquities I will remember no more." This is what God has said, brethren, and why should you not believe Him? Oh! comfort to a soul weary in itself, to a heavy burdened conscience, to hear the Lord from heaven saying, “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” And again, “Your sins and iniquities will I remember no more.” —Think of this.—Yours, with many prayers, J. N. DARBY.

Substance of a Lecture on Romans 11

Of the two great subjects besides our individual salvation, of which the Scriptures treat, as already stated, (namely, the Church and the government of the world,) the latter leads us at once to the Jewish as its center, as the Church is of the heavenly glory under Christ; under whom as their head all things in heaven and earth are to be gathered together in one. That government will extend over the whole earth, but the royal nation and seat and center of government will be the Jewish people. To Jerusalem, as the center alike of worship and government, all nations will flow. So it was ordained from the beginning, as we learn from the remarkable passage, Deut. 32:8. “When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For the LORD'S portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His inheritance.”

The difficulty we have to meet in men's minds on this point is this: that that people having been set aside for their sins—first of idolatry, secondly the rejection of the Lord Jesus—and the Church and kingdom of heaven having been established, it is supposed they will not be restored, but merge in the profession of Christianity. But this sets aside alike the prophecies of the Old and the declarations of the New Testament.

I will refer to this last first, as correcting this very mistake, and this will make way for the direct and positive testimonies of the Old which concern this people of God's election. Rom. 11, this question is treated: “I say then, is the question with which it begins, hath God cast away His people? God forbid. God hath not cast away His people whom he foreknew.” Then the case is put of their rejection, and the apostle argues; the casting of them away was the reconciling of the world, and proceeds, “for if the casting of them away be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead? And if some of the branches were broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, were graffed in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree; boast not against the branches; but if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee. Thou wilt say then, the branches were broken off that I might be graffed in. Well, because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not high minded, but fear; for if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee. Behold, therefore, the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but towards thee goodness, if thou continue in his goodness; otherwise thou also shalt be cut off: And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be graffed them in again. For if thou were cut out of the olive tree, which is wild by nature, and wert graffed contrary to nature into a good olive tree, &c.”

Then he warns the Gentile Christians against the very notion to which I refer, assuring them that they are in danger of being cut off in their turn, as we shall see more fully when we treat that subject. In the 25th verse he adds, For I would not have you ignorant of this mystery, that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved, as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob. They are partially set aside till the Church be called, and then a deliverer, Christ, shall after all the Church is brought in, come out of Sion and turn away their ungodliness. This is not by the gospel as now preached, for he adds: “As touching the gospel they are enemies for your sakes,” the Gentiles being thus let in, “but as touching the election they are beloved for the fathers' sakes. For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” Here we have God's ways towards them clearly set forth. Partial blindness for a time, during which the Church, the fullness of the Gentiles, is called; when that is closed their deliverer comes out of Sion. Our gospel is not the means, they are as a nation enemies as respects that, but they have not ceased to be beloved for the fathers' sake. That is a matter of God's election, and as to His gifts and dealings He does not change His mind.

Thus it is certain that God maintains His purpose as to them as a people, and that it is not by the gospel as now preached they will be called in. As to that they are enemies. So the Lord at the close of Matt. 24, when declaring the judgment coming upon them, says, Their house should be desolate till they say, accomplishing the 118 Psalm, “Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the LORD.” And he carries on their history till His coming again, consequent on which, He will gather together the elect among them from the four winds; nor should they cease to subsist as a distinct class till all was fulfilled. Compare Deut. 32:5-20. Then the Lord gives His ways with His servants meanwhile, and afterward with the Gentile nations when he returns.

Thus we learn distinctly the teaching of the New Testament, of the Lord, and the apostle, as to the plan and ways of God in respect of his ancient and elect people. If we compare Deut. 32:26-27, and what follows, we shall find this abundantly confirmed. In the end the Lord will judge His people, and repent Himself concerning His servants, and the nations be called to rejoice with them, and Jehovah will be merciful to His land and to His people.

I may now turn to the direct declarations of the prophets, which leave no shadow of doubt on their restoration and blessing, and that, as a people with Jerusalem for the center of their dominion and glory. That these prophecies have never been accomplished the passages themselves will prove; but there are certain general considerations which effect this question which I will here notice. That Israel as a people were not brought into their promised blessings, when Christ first came, is evident. It was the time of their casting away, and the grafting in of the Gentiles, the reconciling the world, and their receiving again is set in contrast with it. Jerusalem was destroyed, not rebuilt; the people scattered, not gathered.

But their restoration after the Babylonish captivity is sometimes alleged to be the fulfillment of these promises; but was far indeed from accomplishing them. Their blessings are to be under the new covenant; but the new covenant was not established then. They are to be under Messiah, but Messiah was not then. The Jews were still in captivity, so that Nehemiah speaks thus: “Behold we are servants this day, and for the land that thou gavest unto our fathers to eat the fruit thereof and the good thereof, behold we are servants in it. And it yieldeth much increase to the kings which thou hast set over us because of our sins Also they have dominion over our bodies and over our cattle at their pleasure, and we are in great distress.”

Further, when Christianity was introduced, not only was Jerusalem destroyed in judgment, but the Gentiles were in full glory and triumph. When the Jews are re-established according to prophecy, they are judged and brought under.

I will now quote the prophecies which predict this establishment of the people. You will see its connection with Christ, with the judgment of the Gentiles, It will be the sparing of a remnant, in the first instance, which will become a great nation. I first quote Isaiah, who furnishes us with some very remarkable prophecies on this subject. After describing the universal evil and the judgment of this nation, he closes his introductory prophecy thus, chap. 4:2-6. “In that day shall the branch of the LORD be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel. And it shall come to pass that, he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem. When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning. And the LORD will create upon every dwelling place of Mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory shall be a defense. And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the day time from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain.”

Thus the glory will be restored to Zion when the Lord shall have purged away her guilt by judgment. Two causes of judgment are there stated; the unfaithfulness of Israel to her first calling; and their unfitness to meet the glory of the Lord when he appears. In this last (chap. 6) that judgment which the Lord recalls is pronounced, “Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.” The prophet then inquires, “How long?” The answer is, “Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate, and the Lord has removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land.” Then it is added, “But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten, as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they have cast their leaves, so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof.” Nothing could more strikingly depict the lung winter of Israel's desolation; but here God would in the remnant give a principle of restoration and blessing, as Paul in Rom. 11.

This point is more historically prophesied of in 8 and 9, where the rejection of Christ is definitely spoken of, 14-18; and His manifestation in glory in favor of Israel, yet in judgment, in 9:5,7.

Chapters 11 and 12, the closing ones of this series, largely declare the restoration of Israel, terminating thus, 12:6: “Cry out and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion: for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee.”

In chapters 24 and 25, which form the close of the next series of prophecies, the testimony of God is carried on to the utter desolation of the earth. “It shall reel to and fro like a drunken man, and the transgression thereof is heavy upon it, and it shall fall and not rise again,” that is, it is its definite and final judgment as the earth of man's power. It is added, “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth ... Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the LORD of hosts shall reign in Mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously.” Here, therefore, again we find judgment on the earth, and the Jewish people brought to the enjoyment of Jehovah's presence and blessing. But there is more than this. In chapter 25 universal blessing comes on the Gentiles then: “And in this mountain shall the LORD of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations.” As this time also it is that the resurrection takes place, verse 8: “He will swallow up death in victory: and the LORD GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces: and the rebuke of His people shall He take away from all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken it.” In the mountain of Zion is the awaited blessing and power that sets aside all that is hostile.

In chapter 26 all is celebrated in a prophetic song. In chapter 27 Satan's power is destroyed, and God's dealings with Israel reviewed.

In taking up these closing chapters of the two series of prophecies (5-12 and 24-27) the first, God's dealings with Israel as in the land, the second, with the Gentiles, I have passed over a remarkable chapter in the midst of the Gentile series to which I must now return, the 18, difficult in expression, but very plain, in its purpose. Messengers are sent by a mighty protecting power, to a nation scattered and feeble, a nation wonderful from the beginning. The Lord summons all the inhabitants of the world to attend. He holds himself aloof in his dwelling. The Jews come back, looking for full national blessing in a carnal way; just as it seemed blooming they are cut down again, and the beasts of the field, the Gentiles, summer and winter on them. Still at that time a present is brought of this people to the Lord, and then from them to Him in the mount of Zion. We learn thus their return by some political movement, their subsequent desolation in their land; yet they are brought to the Lord, and they themselves bring their offering to Jehovah in Zion.

You will find in chap. 29, and remarkably in 32, and largely in 34 and 35, the Spirit's testimony to the final restoration of Israel. You may compare 54, 62, 65, and 66, for enlarged testimonies of the restoration of Jerusalem in the glory. The prophecies of Isaiah have the character of a general revelation of the ways of God, having the Jews for their center, including their guilt in separating from Jehovah, and in rejecting Christ; Babylon, their scourge when disowned, and their Assyrian when they were owned.

But Jeremiah lived when the house of David had completed its guilt, and Jerusalem was about to be given up to the captivity of Babylon. Hence, while pleading with them as to their sins, He enters into specific detail as to the restoration of the Jews and Jerusalem, announcing, as the other prophets, the judgment of the haughty Gentiles. To his prophecies I will now return. The whole of the chapters from 30 to 34 are worthy of your fullest attention. I can only quote the most striking passages.

In chapter 30 the prophet speaks a that day of Jacob's trouble which there is none like, of which the Lord speaks in Matt. 24, but declares he shall be delivered out of it, a declaration which, as we know, was not accomplished at the first destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, and adds that in that day the Lord of hosts would break the yoke from off his neck, and strangers should no more serve themselves of him, takes notice of the utter desolation of Jerusalem, but declares he would bring back the captivity, and the city should be built on its own heap, and the palace remain after the manner thereof; and then announces the utter judgment of the wicked when Israel should be His people: it would be in the latter days.

Both families (31) should be His people. This shows at once it was not the restoration from Babylon merely. It is declared that His love is an everlasting love. Jacob was redeemed (ver. 11) they would come and sing in the height of Zion. This is declared 27, to be founded in establishing the new covenant, and the chapter closes with these remarkable words: “Thus saith the LORD, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; the LORD of hosts is his name: if those ordinances depart from before rue, saith the LORD, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me forever. Thus saith the LORD, if heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the LORD. Behold the days come, saith the LORD, that the city shall be built to the LORD from the tower of Hananeel unto the gate of the corner. And the measuring line shall yet go forth over against it upon the bill Gareb, and shall compass about to Goath. And the whole valley of dead bodies, and of the ashes and all the fields unto the brook of Kidron, unto the corner of the horse gate toward the east, shall be holy unto the LORD; it shall not be plucked up, nor thrown down any more forever.”

In the 32 Jeremiah is commanded to redeem land at Anathoth and the chapter closes thus. The Lord declares, He will gather them and they will be His people, and He will be their God. “And I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me forever, for the good of them, and their children after them: and I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me. Yea, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant them in this land assuredly with my whole heart, and with my whole soul. For thus saith the LORD, like as I have brought all this great evil upon this people so will I bring upon them all this good that I have promised them,” and returning to the occasion of the prophecy, “Behold, Hananeel the son of Shallum thine uncle shall come unto thee, saying, buy thee my field that is at Anathoth for the right of redemption is thine to buy it. So Hananeel mine uncle's son came to me in the court of the prison according to the word of the LORD, and said unto me, buy my field, I pray thee, that is in Anathoth, which is in the country of Benjamin: for the right of inheritance is thine, and the redemption is thine, buy it for thyself. Then I knew that this was the word of the LORD. And I bought the field of Hananeel my uncle's son, that was in, Anathoth, and weighed him the money, even seventeen shekels of silver.” The promises are renewed in 33 and God declares, David shall never want a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel. “If ye can break my covenant of the day and my covenant of the night, and that there should not be day and night in their season. Then may also my covenant be broken with David my servant, that he should not have a son to reign upon his throne: and with the Levites the priests, my ministers. As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of sea measured; so will I multiply the seed of David my servant, and the Levites that minister unto me. Moreover the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah saying, considerest thou not what this people have spoken saying, the two families which the LORD hath chosen, he hath even cast them off: thus they have despised my people, that they should be no more a nation before them. Thus saith the Lord: if my covenant be not with day and night, and if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth; then will I cast away the seed of Jacob, and David my servant, so that I will not take any of his seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: for I will cause their captivity to return, and have mercy on them.”

Nothing can be more positive than these promises. The Lord takes the ground of His unchangeable faithfulness, refers to all the evil man has been guilty of, and declares He will not cast him off for it, but put the law in his heart, gives local details as to the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and says that has he had pulled down and destroyed them He would build them up again so that it is impossible to apply it to any others.

We get details as to their restoration which passing on to Ezekiel leads us to. In chapter 20 of that prophet we are told that, as regards the ten tribes, they will be brought out of the countries, and as in the days of leaving Egypt the rebels fell in the wilderness, so now they would pass under the rod like a flock told by the shepherd and the rebels would not enter into the land, verses 34-38. This is not so with the two tribes, they will return in unbelief; a remnant only being faithful, Daniel's “wise ones,” “and two thirds will be cut off in the land and the third part pass through the fire and be refined as silver is refined,” see Zech. 13; 8:9

But I must quote some other passages of Ezekiel. In chapter 34 God judges the shepherds. He there declares He will take the flock into His own care (verse 11-22). He then in the 23rd verse passes on in unsymbolical language to say what He will do in the latter days. “And I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd. And I the LORD will be their God, and my servant David a prince among them; I the LORD have spoken it. And I will make with them a covenant of peace, and will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the land, and they shall dwell safely in the wilderness, and sleep in the woods. And I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing; and I will cause the shower to come down in his season; there shall be showers of blessing. And the tree of the field shall yield her fruit, and the earth shall yield her increase, and they shall be safe in their land, and shall know that I am the LORD, when I have broken the bands of their yoke, and delivered them out of the hand of those that served themselves of them. And they shall no more be a prey to the heathen, neither shall the beasts of the land devour them; but they shall dwell safely and none shall make them afraid And I will raise up for them a plant of renown, and they shall be no more consumed with hunger in the land, neither bear the shame of the heathen any more. Thus shall they know that I the LORD their God am with them, and that they, even the house of Israel, are my people, saith the Lord God And ye my flock, the flock of my pasture, are men, and I am your God, saith the Lord God.”

In chapter 36 we have the well-known passage in which being born again is declared to be the work which God will accomplish in them that they may enjoy their l and before Him. “For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean; from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God. I will also save you from all your uncleannesses; and I will call for the corn, and will increase it, and lay no famine upon you. And I will multiply the fruit of the tree, and the increase of the field, that ye shall receive no more reproach of famine among the heathen.” Then the heathen would know that this restoration was Jehovah's doing. This last point, which we find more than once in Ezekiel, is an important element in the re-establishment of Israel, and like the others, and especially their occurrence at the same time, has never yet been fulfilled.

In chapter 37 we see a further point insisted on. The dry bones of Israel would be clothed with flesh, and the people brought to life again, and placed (verse 14) in their own land. But when this takes place in the last days, the long-separated ten tribes will be reunited to Judah and have one head never to be divided again (19, 20). David (the beloved) that is “Christ,” is to be king over them; God's tabernacle will be amongst them; He, Jehovah, will be their God and they His people; and the heathen will know that Jehovah sanctifies Israel when His sanctuary is in the midst of them for evermore. This dwelling of Jehovah in their midst has never been, if not by the presence of Christ whom they rejected, since the Babylonish captivity.

Ezekiel wholly passes over the times of the Gentiles, and introduces Jehovah again in their midst in the land. Connected with this is the account of the inroad of Gog, in the two following chapters. When restored to the land, and appearing outwardly to be restored to blessing, Gog comes up against them; God pleads against him and sanctifies Himself in this judgment. Gog falls on the mountains of Israel, and God makes His holy name known in the midst of Israel; He allows them no more to pollute His name and the heathen shall know that He, Jehovah, is the holy one in Israel. “Behold,” it is added in remarkable language, “it is come and it is done, saith the Lord God. This is the day whereof I have spoken.” The prophecy is closed by these words “Then shall they know that I am the Lord their God which caused them to be led into captivity among the heathen, but I have gathered them unto their own land, and have left none of them any more there. Neither will I hide my face any more from them; for I have poured out my spirit upon the house of Israel, saith the Lord God.”

Thus the revelation of the full restoration of Israel in both parts of the divided kingdom, reunited in one under Christ and the new covenant, connected with the judgment of the heathen, and their learning that Jehovah is in the midst of Israel, Jerusalem being rebuilt and glorified, as in Isa. 60, is made as clear as words can well make it.

I will confirm this, however, by some remarkable testimonies of the minor prophets.

Turn to Hos. 3:4, 5, “For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without a teraphim: Afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king; and shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days.” You will remark that the blessing of Jehovah and the often mentioned David are spoken of in the latter days; meanwhile, they have not the true God, and they have not false gods, no sacrifice, but no image either. Thus they abide many days, and thus have abode. In the latter days it shall be otherwise. In Joel 3 we have again the judgment, of the Gentiles summoned to awake up and come to the great day of God to the valley of Jehoshaphat (the judgment of God). There, says Jehovah, will I sit to judge all the heathen round about, and the harvest, separating judgment, and the vintage, judgment of pure vengeance, arrive. Of the Jews it is said, 20, 21, “But Judah shall dwell forever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation, for I will cleanse their blood that I have not cleansed, for the Lord dwelleth in Zion.”

In Amos 9:14, 15, here we get what has clearly never yet been fulfilled, while it applies to temporal blessings in the land: “They shall no more be plucked up out of their land which I have given them, saith Jehovah thy God.” It is here a question, which is not one for faith, whether God's word will be fulfilled.

In Micah we have a beautiful description of what Israel will be in the world in that day under Christ. They will not be added to the Church one by one, and, lost though blessed in it, they will be gathered as Israel 5:3. Then Christ will be their strength against the Assyrian their foe, when owned in the land. Then they become as dew in the world, the freely flowing blessing of God, but as a lion among the beasts of the forest to all that oppose them and the counsels of God in them, verse 7, while all evil is purged out from them and the heathen judged, as we have never seen, 9-15.

In Zeph. 3 we have another passage full of instruction as to the Lord's ways with this people. First, Jehovah's long and gracious, but useless, patience (7). So the godly ones had to wait till judgment came on the nations would subdue them and bring in blessing. In Israel there would be a poor and afflicted and sanctified remnant, (12, 13) but peace should be their portion. Then Zion, Israel, and Jerusalem are called to rejoice with all their heart; Jehovah was in their midst, they would not see evil any more, God would rest in His love. The blessing so great that His love would be satisfied and in repose. Blessed thought! still more blessedly true of us when Jesus shall see the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied. Then all that afflict Israel will be undone, and the people made a praise among all people of the earth (14-20).

In Zechariah, the whole of chapter 10 describes the restoration of Israel in the latter days, speaking of each division of the people, Judah and Ephraim; then 11 tells of Christ's rejection; and in 12 all the nations gathered against Jerusalem are judged, and she becomes a burdensome stone for them, (so that it has no application to past events) and there is a detailed account of how Jehovah will save the people: “In that day will I make the governors of Judah like an hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire in a sheaf; and they shall devour all the people round about, on the right hand and on the left: and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place, even in Jerusalem. The Lord also shall save the tents of Judah first, that the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem do not magnify themselves against Judah.” Then there is the mourning over Christ's rejection, and they look on Him whom they have pierced. They are sifted, 13:9, and two-thirds cut off, and the third part pass through the fire. The last chapter (14). closes this striking history with full details of what shall take place. The Lord comes. His feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives. At evening time, when men would expect darkness it will be light. Living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem. Jehovah shall be king over all the earth; He alone shall be owned. Jerusalem shall be inhabited in her place; there shall be no more utter destruction, but Jerusalem shall be safely inhabited.

The testimonies I have cited are amply sufficient to show to every one who receives the testimony of God's word as true, the certainty of the restoration of Israel to their own land to be blessed under Christ and the new covenant. The circumstances of the return of Israel and Judah are distinguished. Of the former, the rebels are cut off outside the land, which they never enter; of the latter, in the land: the residue of these last pass through the fire. This involves the history of Antichrist and the Gentiles, which will be spoken of when the prophecies as to them are considered. But Israel and Judah are united under one head. Further in the series of events which usher in the blessing, the Gentiles are gathered against Israel and are judged, and afterward blessed in connection with, and subordinate to, that people. Jehovah is king over all the earth. It is noticed, too, that these events take place at the epoch at which the resurrection does. Peace reigns, and the curse is removed: Jerusalem is never defiled any more, nor does Israel lose its blessing.

Such is the establishment of the divine government of the world at the close. Of this government Israel is the center, according to the fixed purpose and unchangeable calling of God; they reject now the gospel, but are beloved for the father's sake: they will believe when they see. We have brighter blessings, because we believe without seeing; and this is one thing which renders the understanding of the prophecies, as to the Jews, important. Not only is it precious to us as a part of Christ's glory, but our clear apprehension of the application of prophecy to them, hinders our misapplying it to the Church. This takes its own heavenly character. It is witness of sovereign grace, giving it a place with Christ where no promise was Israel the testimony to God's faithfulness to his promises, Jehovah who was and is to come. Israel will, indeed, be the royal people, the center of Christ's earthly power and dominion, but they will be reigned over. We, by pure grace, shall reign with Him, suffering first with Him. The Church has its place with Him, Israel its own blessing under Him according to His promises of old.

Thoughts on Romans: Chapter 1-8

To the end of chapter 3 it is a question of man's state, Jew or Gentile, before God, and of God's answer to that state by the blood of Christ. In chap. 4 we see man justified by blood, being set by grace in a new position, by virtue of resurrection. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 present the application of this life to justification, to the conduct of the justified man, and to his deliverance from the law. Chap. 8 opens out the Christian state founded on this deliverance—the state of man set free.

Chap. 1:1. “Paul, servant of Jesus Christ.” Paul addresses the Romans according to the apostolic authority he possessed. He had no title with them, because of his labors; he had not yet labored at Rome. He names himself alone. We may see elsewhere that, when he wrote to a church in which he had wrought with others, he named them with him in the introduction of the epistle. “Called apostle:” these two words must be read without separating them (not “to be” an apostle). The sense is an apostle called, an apostle, not by succession, &c., but by calling. We find again this form of expression in verse 7, where we have “saints called” “the gospel of God;” elsewhere it is said, “the gospel of Christ,” “the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ;” and usage has, so to speak, chosen this last appellation. But if it is good to see the gospel in its acts, it is good also to see it in its source. Here we have God's gospel, an expression which shows in God Himself the spring of grace, and which rejects the common idea of an angry God appeased by Jesus Christ. If it was necessary for our happiness that the Son of man should be lifted up on the cross, it is His own Son whom God has given. Such is the sovereign grace which God has communicated to us by the gospel.

Paul was “called” by the Lord on the road to Damascus; he was “separated” by the authority of the Spirit at Antioch. (Acts 9-13.)

Ver. 2-4. There are two things to consider in this gospel: the accomplishment of promises (not of the promises) and the power of God in resurrection. “According to the spirit of holiness, declared Son of God in power, by resurrection of the dead.” The spiritual power which was manifested in the person of Christ during His life was manifested in power in resurrection. The reference is not to promise merely, but to the power of resurrection; it is the abstract expression, but demonstrated in a fact. If I lift up this table, it is by power that I do so, while it is, at the same time, the act of lifting the table which proves this power. “By resurrection of dead [persons],” not that of Christ alone it is by the resurrection of others, as well as by His own, though this was. the great proof, that Jesus was marked out Son of God. It will be remarked how the apostle fully owns the previous order of things and revelations, and the relation in which the gospel stood thereto. It was promised before in holy scriptures (so Jesus is presented, first as David's seed, and object of promise, and next as Son of God in power), the grand subject-matter of God's gospel.

Ver. 5. “Grace and apostleship.” In Paul the two things were bound together, in a particular way. He had, at the same time, received grace for himself, and apostleship (mission) for others; and this from Jesus, the Lord of the harvest. It was a mission received by grace, the object of which was the obedience of faith among all the nations—not the obedience of the law, which was the responsibility of Israel. It is the mode of the obedience, not the object.

Ver. 6, 7. Among these Gentiles were the believers at Rome, saints, not by birth, nor by ceremonial institutions, but by divine call. The Jews were born a holy nation relatively to the Gentiles. The Roman Christians were saints by calling of Jesus Christ, and beloved of God.

Ver. 8-17. Next follows the apostle's thanksgiving for their faith; also the expression of his desire to see them for blessing. “First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers; making request, if by any means now at length I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come unto you.” (Ver. 8-10.) The apostle served God with or in his spirit, in the glad tidings of His Son. It was ministry in communion with the source whence it took its rise. Indeed there is no real power of God otherwise, though there may be much activity. But it is a poor thing if only rendered as a duty. Accordingly, there is amazing interest in the saints as belonging to God. “Without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers, making request” (&c. “For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift unto your establishing.” It is not that Paul forgets the privilege of his apostleship; but how tenderly he adds that it was to their finding comfort together in their mutual faith— “both of you and me!” It was not a new thought. Often he purposed to come to them, but hitherto had been hindered. He was indebted to all the nations, and was ready to announce the glad tidings to them also that was in Rome. For he was not ashamed of his message. The gospel is God's power. The law would have been man's strength, if he had been able to accomplish it. “For God's righteousness is revealed in it by faith unto faith.” The law demanded righteousness from man. The gospel reveals God's righteousness already accomplished in Christ, and justifies, instead of condemning. Hence, being not in man but of God, it is for faith; because it is by faith that a revelation is received. This righteousness was exercised against sin on the cross, of which Christ knew the suffering; afterward it is revealed in the gospel. The cross was not the revelation of righteousness (for Jesus Christ the Righteous ought not justly to have died); the cross is the execution of righteousness. When God executes righteousness, He strikes; when He displays His righteousness to man, He justifies him. The meaning of the phrase, “by faith,” is properly on the principle of faith. This righteousness pertains to faith, not to the law; consequently it is revealed where there is faith. The gospel was the intervention of God accomplishing a salvation which was from first to last His work. Hence man enters into it by faith—the only means of sharing blessing which was wholly from God. The law proved that man has no righteousness for God. The gospel declares that God has His righteousness and gives it to man, to the believer, Jew or Gentile; for being of faith, and not of the law, it was opened by grace to the Gentile, as to the Jew. The Jewish prophet confirmed and proved this: “the just shall live by faith.” (See Hab. 2)

Ver. 18. From verse 18, of chap. 1 to chap. 3:20, we find an exposé, in which Paul, before showing the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel, begins by establishing that all men are under sin and judgment. Verse 18 gives the thesis on this point: “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth [while living] in unrighteousness.” The heathen, who are first considered, are seen in this state of culpability. Nor is it earthly judgments (so familiar in Old Testament history) but divine wrath, which is now revealed. Not that it is revealed in the gospel, which unfolds divine righteousness: nevertheless it is revealed from heaven, in connection with the grace which delivers from this very wrath—revealed against every sort of impiety and especially where the truth is professed along with the dishonor of God, whether in Jews or Christendom. God is now fully revealed in Christ; and all sin, whatever and wherever it is, being set in the light of heaven, is insupportable.

The unfolding which is here given of men's state reveals in them beings fallen into profound degradation, at the same time that it manifests the serious responsibility under the consequences of which they lie. For their fall and their progress in evil were not accomplished till they had slighted the testimonies of the truth of God. First, by the works of creation, God had set before their eyes the witness which makes known what cannot be seen of Him—His eternal power and godhead (19, 20). This should have rendered them inexcusable. But, besides, they had originally known God. Noah's descendants, doubtless, had known Him; for after having caused the old world to disappear by a terrible judgment, God had recommenced the present world by a family in which He had placed the deposit of the knowledge of Himself. But men had not kept it; nay, they had perverted it; they had abandoned the Creator to worship the creature (ver. 21 and seq.) And God, in righteous retribution, had turned their own perversion against themselves. They were left to themselves to degrade against themselves. Yet more—to abominable lusts, and a mind void of moral discernment. Giving up God's honor, they dishonored themselves, and had sympathy with the vileness of others.

Chap. 2. Behold now a class of individuals which differs from the preceding, in that they judge those disorders. Philosophers, moralists, &c., well discerned such a state of things. Were they changed themselves? In no way. Could God accept such things? Assuredly not. If they judged evil, it was not to avoid it; they judged it with others only; and God classes even them among those who possess the truth in unrighteousness. Here the pagan philosopher (ver. 1-16) and the Jew (17-29) find their place. These last occupy, in respect of those who went before, a more elevated moral position. But these outsides of wisdom and knowledge do not suffice to escape God's judgment, which will be according to truth, and which cannot be deceived by man's disguises.

In this chapter, the position is not viewed, as in the foregoing, in connection with God's government. It is not the Gentile under the consequences of his conduct towards God, running in an open way into gross wanderings; nor the Jew with special privileges set apart in the midst of the nations. The title which describes this class is very general, “thou, man, that judgest whoever thou art." Moreover, man stript before the justice of God, is judged according to his light and his real moral condition. None who does evil shall escape God's judgment. His mercy and long-suffering, which ought to lead the evildoer to repentance, will never lessen that judgment which man forgets as easily as he despises His goodness. The issues of a life far from God, and a godly one, are equally certain (6-11). Men as such will be dealt with according to their true character morally, and according to the advantages enjoyed. God will judge the Gentile by conscience, the Jew by law, in the day in which the secrets of the heart are judged, according to Paul's gospel (12-16). There will be no preference for the circumcision; for that, without fidelity, is uncircumcision in God's estimate (v. 25), for there is no respect of persons with Him. He will have realities; and His judgment here spoken of is a judgment of the secrets of the heart, not exterior and earthly, “But if” (for that is the true reading, and not “behold” in verse. 17) one had the name of Jew and behaved evilly, it was but blaspheming the name of God among the Gentiles, as it is written, and such an one's circumcision became uncircumcision. On the other hand, righteousness in an uncircumcised state would be reckoned for circumcision. The true Jew is so, not in outward show merely, but hiddenly and in spirit circumcised (17-29).

Chap. 3:1-8, Here is the proper consideration of the Jews and their state, such as it was in fact, whatever might be the great privileges with which God had honored them nationally. Christian doctrine, though it reduce the Jew to the level of the Gentile when it is a question of sin, in no way despises the distinctive advantages of the Jew. It owns them, particularly that of being entrusted with the oracles of God. It owns them, even in presence of the faithlessness of many in Israel. For God is faithful, who will judge the faithless, and keep His people faithfully.

Ver. 9-20. But those same oracles, whose deposit is one of the great privileges of Israel, declare, and this in a solemn manner, that the Jews are under sin and judgment. On their own showing and boast, the law was theirs, and it addressed them. But if so, it declared that God could find not one righteous, with yet more terrible descriptions of their state outwardly and inwardly. Such were the Jews according to their own psalms and prophets. Thus every mouth was closed and all the world brought in guilty before God. No man should be justified before Him by works of law; for those who had the law were so much the more guilty in that they had transgressed it. Law gives knowledge of sin, not power against it, nor justification from it.

Ver. 21-31. Man has no righteousness: judgment is already pronounced upon him. But when it is proved that every kind of righteousness is wanting in man, then the gospel discovers the boundless riches of grace and shows God revealing His righteousness in saving lost man. Yes, it belongs to the glad tidings of Jesus Christ to reveal in God a righteousness which saves man. “Now, without law, divine righteousness is manifested, being testified of by the law and the prophets—divine righteousness by faith of Christ Jesus towards all, and upon all who believe.” Thus by faith, man is delivered from judgment, and put at ease with God. Evidently, if God's righteousness, according to which men shall be judged, becomes our righteousness, our deliverance is ensured, and we have perfect security for the judgment. If the righteousness whereby justification comes were man's own, it must be by law—the law given to the Jews; but it is God's righteousness, and therefore is towards all men, Gentiles as well as Jews. But it takes effect only where there is faith in Jesus. If it is unto all, it is only upon all that believe, Jew or Greek; for there is no difference: “All have sinned and are come short of the glory of God.” What then is to be done? “Being justified freely by His grace, through the redemption which is in Jesus Christ, whom God hath set forth a mercy-seat through faith in his blood.” It is God who justifies, and He justifies in virtue of His own grace, established on the value of Christ's blood. Instead of bringing into judgment, He had passed by sins of Old Testament saints (which is the meaning of “sins that are past” or that had taken place before). But now it was not only the forbearance of God: the atonement was accomplished, and this vindicated both His praetermission of sins in past time, and His showing His righteousness in the present time, so that He should be just and justify him who is of the faith of Jesus. God abides in this character (i.e., just in justifying sinners).

There are two things to remark as to the righteousness of God. Justice was first exercised in vengeance on the victim, after that in acceptance. The Christ whom God smote on the cross He has accepted by receiving Him near Himself. And our condition answers to these two things: “we have redemption through His blood,” and “we are accepted in the Beloved.” But this last feature belongs more particularly to the following chapter.

Boasting is thus excluded by this law, or principle, of faith of Jesus, which justifies without law—works of any sort. And the God who acts thus in grace is the God of Gentiles no less than of Jews, since it is one who justifies Jews by faith (ἐκ πίστεως), not by law, and Gentiles through their faith (διὰ τῆς πίστεως), if they believe. Justification flows from faith and nothing else; and the man who believes is justified. Also (31), this doctrine of faith establishes the authority of law instead of weakening it. Faith supposes man's ruin under law, but receives another righteousness, even God's. Law is made void by him who pretends to stand under law without being condemned.

Chap. 4. Up to the end of chap. 3 the apostle has developed the sad state of man, and presented the blood of Christ, as answering to this state. In chap. 4 he opens out the new position which the resurrection gives us. In this way holiness of life cannot be severed from justification by grace, because from Christ one receives, at the same time, both righteousness and life. There are three thoughts in this chapter. First, Abraham believed God. Second, when Abraham entered into the blessings of faith, he was not circumcised. Third, his faith embraced the power and life of resurrection. It is clear that Abraham's case sets us on the same principle of faith. If justified by works, he would have had ground for boasting, which can never be before God. James speaks of justification before man, and hence speaks of what Abraham did when tried. long after. Scripture says that his faith was reckoned to him as righteousness. And such is the principle now—not to him that works, as a debt, but as of grace to him who believes on Him who justifies the ungodly. Abraham, then, exemplifies justification by faith. In perfect accordance with it is the language of David in Psa. 32. For he speaks of blessedness, where the man was not righteous but a sinner. The happiness of such an one is, that God does not impute his sins, but covers them, and reckons to him righteousness without works. Incontestably, also, Abraham was uncircumcised when God thus dealt with him—an overwhelming consideration for the Jews, who looked up to Abraham as the beau ideal to which all their notions of excellence and privilege were referred. Circumcision, then, was only the seal of the righteousness of faith, which he had during his uncircumcised state.

It may be observed here, that we are instructed in redemption, but redemption is not given as the object of faith. Our faith has for its object God, Christ. We are justified by faith in Jesus Christ. Abraham believed God. He believed the God who quickens the dead, and we believe on Him who has raised up from the dead Jesus our Lord Another thing should be borne in mind, that we are before God according to all the worth of the acceptance of Christ. Not only is sin taken away, but, moreover, we have a righteousness, which has glorified God, and we are accepted according to this righteousness, received “safe and sound” to be before God. To receive from God the wedding garment is more than to be simply stript of our rags; it is to be clothed. Christ, independently of the putting away of our sins, has done a work which gives Him a personal title before God. Were there none saved, still Jesus would have the position to which He is entitled by this work in which God has been glorified by Him. In coming here below, the Savior found man lost, and the glory of God tarnished by the sin of the creature. He undertook to serve man, and to retrieve the glory of God; and success crowned His work. In this respect, God receives from man (in Jesus) for His glory, as he received from him (in Adam) for his dishonor. In Jesus, on the cross, God recovered all His rights in justice, and has been fully manifested in love. In fact, there is more glory on the cross than in heaven. We may share the heavenly glory; but as for that of the cross, none but Christ could sustain it.

It follows thence, that in virtue of righteousness Jesus is before God, according to all the value of the work in which He glorified God. And there is the righteousness which is imputed to us. By faith we share with Christ this blessed portion. “We are as He is;” and such being our condition in this world, we have confidence for the day of judgment. Christ will judge the world in righteousness; but the righteousness with which He will judge is ours: the Judge is our righteousness. Observe, that in this case, righteousness supposes a spiritual life. It is never said that we ought to be what He was, but that we ought to walk as He walked. The life that we receive from Christ, who is now in heaven, renders us capable of walking as He walked. We could not be what He was; for we should be under responsibility before righteousness, and, besides, we have lusts, &c., which He had not. We are so as He is now; and we should walk as He walked, when He was here below.

Verse 12 should be thus translated: “father of circumcision not only to them who are of the circumcision, but to those also who walk,” &c. Abraham is here called father of circumcision, or of true separation to God—father of this separation, as the person in whom began this order of separating man for God. It was in him that God introduced this new principle of His intervention, in the midst of evil, by setting man apart for Himself. From that time, in the subsequent ways of God with man, this principle of separation has been much developed. Abraham is the father of circumcision in the same sense as that in which science has made Hippocrates the father of medicine.

Ver. 13-16. The promise of itself does not raise the question of sin. God has promised; He will accomplish. But all must be accomplished by grace; and in the interval between the promise given and the promise fulfilled, God brings in the law by which the question of sin and righteousness is awakened, and this furnishes occasion for grace. It was not by law, then, that the promise of being heir of the world was made to Abraham, or to his seed. It was by righteousness of faith. Clearly, then, if those who took the ground of law were heirs, faith is made vain, and the promise null and void. But it is not so: for the law works wrath, and not the enjoyment of the promise; as, on the other hand, there is no transgression where there is no law. The apostle does not say sin; for that there might be where no law was, sin being lawlessness, as John says, (1 John 3:4), and not merely “the transgression of the law,” according to the erroneous rendering of the English version. Here the meaning is most plain: there could be no violation of the law, where there was no law; and where law is given to sinners, it works wrath of necessity. But the inheritance was promised to Abraham, and certainly he to whom a promise is given is not the one who has accomplished it. Therefore it is on the principle of faith, that it might be according to grace (not man's desert), in order that the promise might be sure to all the seed, not only to that which is of the law, but to that also which believed like Abraham. That is to say, faith, and not law, being the title to the inheritance, even the Jews could inherit in no other way, and the door was open to the Gentiles; as it is written, I have made thee father of many nations (ver. 17).

But this is not all. Abraham, not yet circumcised, was justified by faith, without the law and before it. Upon what did he rest? Against hope he believed in hope, and trusted in the resurrection-power of God, fully persuaded that what He had promised He was able also to perform.

We may here remark the difference between the Old Testament saints and us. Abraham believed that God had the power to accomplish His promise, and we (verse 24) believe in Him who has raised up out of the dead Jesus our Lord. If we were in prison, and the authorities gave us the promise of setting us free at a certain time, we might, doubtless, enjoy this promise with assurance; but how different would our condition be, when we were actually at liberty!

The Apostle here speaks not of believing in Jesus, but in God, in Him who has entered in power the region of the death in which Jesus lay because of our sins, and who has lifted Him thence. The resurrection whether of Christ or of His people, is the fruit of the mighty activity of God's love, who has taken from under the consequences of sin Him who had already borne all the penalty of our sins: so that believing in God who has thus raised Him from the dead, we embrace the whole extent of the work on which resurrection has put the seal, as will the grace and the power which are displayed therein. God has thus made an end of our sins once for all, and has set in Jesus us who believe, fully justified by what Jesus has done, since He has done it for all who believe in Him.

But why the future— “to whom it shall be imputed?” Paul here considers man as being in question: “What will then become of man?” He will be justified. We meet several times in the epistle this employment of the future. In this case the future has no reference to the time, but answers to another expression in the phrase. Chap. 6:5 furnishes an example. There we read, “for if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.” “Shall be,” though future, clearly points out in this verse a thing which we now possess; for it is said a little farther on, (verse 13), “yield yourselves to God, as those that are alive from the dead.” It is the same with the words “shall be imputed” at the end of Rom. 4

The principle of resurrection established in this chapter abides in the following, applied in chap. 5 to justification, in chap. 6 to the life of the justified, and in chap. 7 to the law.

( To be continued.)

Thoughts on Romans: Chapter 5-8

Chapter 5:1 There is a slight difference between justification and peace, though in simple souls these two blessings go on together. Peace is the consequence of justification. “Having been justified, we have peace with God.”

Though it be by faith alone that we are justified, God, in justifying us, sets the soul in connection with the grace received. One must take account of that in evangelization and the care of souls. Experience, it is true, is not faith—we are not justified by experience; and yet if the state of the soul rests outside what faith has received, true peace cannot be enjoyed.

Ver. 2. But not only is the work done and he who receives God's testimony (i.e., the believer) justified. Three privileges follow justification by faith. 1St, as we have seen, we have peace; 2nd, we are in the grace or favor of God; and 3rd, we boast (or rejoice) in the hope of His glory. Peace is the end of war; grace goes farther; we are actually in the enjoyment of God's favor. As regards the past, (the old man and his acts,) we have peace; as to the present, we are in favor before God; for the future, we await glory. In a certain sense the entire Christian position is given in these three things—peace, grace, and hope. Nevertheless, there is more, for we find farther on, and twice, the expression, “And not only so” (3, 11).

Ver. 3. “We boast (or rejoice) in tribulations also.” The ways of God towards us during the crossing of the wilderness are designed to mortify the flesh, to break the man, and thereby to form us for the knowledge of God. The flesh is a veil which hides heavenly things from us. God acts in our interest, as to this veil, and afterward we see better throughout. In this verse 3 it is in view of the subjective fruit, which results from the tribulation that we boast. In v. 11 we boast in view of the objective blessing—we joy or boast in God. By objective blessing is meant the blessing which specially belongs to faith, as the knowledge of God, His work of grace accomplished outside us in Christ, &c. Subjective blessing is said of the effects of grace produced in us.

Ver. 4. The result of tribulation is experience, and that works hope. While experience in affliction is an inner thing and productive of experience, it is not on this inner feeling that one can lean. The sole support given to our faith is the love of God, that love which He showed in Christ toward us. It is there that experience and faith meet. Accordingly there are two aspects in which Paul presents the love of God: -

Ver. 5, His love in us, as a subjective thing; and Ver 6-8, His love for us, objectively.

As soon as the apostle has named the love of God in us, He immediately goes back to God's love for us, the first spring of every blessing. This is the inverse of the human mind. Man is so quick to put himself at the center and to seek in God only what may correspond with the order of things where he finds himself placed. But if we have such a privilege as that of knowing the love of God, it is because God first loved us, even when we were only worthy of his hatred.

Ver. 9, 10. The Holy Ghost reasons not from what is in man, but from what God is (the only certainty for man), and shows us the consequences of the work Christ has done for the believer. Having been justified in the power of His blood, we shall be saved from wrath. For if while enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved in the power of His life—that endless life in which the Son lives eternally.

Ver. 11. The consequence is that we boast not only in this full and assured salvation, but in God Himself. If we boast in the things received, we also boast in Him who has given them. We enter thereby into the blessed ocean of the knowledge of God.

Ver. 12. It seems that this verse, which introduces us to a new subject, is linked with what precedes, by the fact that it is by our Lord Jesus Christ that we have now received the reconciliation. Since it is by Him, we are thus carried back to Christ, and to Adam by contrast, beyond the limits of a question of law, Jews, &c.

Ver. 1 2-1 9. The general idea in these verses is that, as Adam introduced sin into the world, Christ has brought righteousness therein. The apostle takes up the subject in Adam at the beginning of the ways of God with man. What he says amounts to this: it is no longer a question of you, Jews, only, but of man, of sin, and consequently of grace. Nor is it you alone who are to be benefited by Christ's work, but Gentiles—sinners. In Adam sin entered the world, and it is for sin committed then and since that Christ came. The work He accomplished is as valid for others as for you.

The meaning of these verses is not that people are condemned solely by the imputation of Adam's sin. It is true that his sin is imputed to his race, but there is also the personal state of the individuals, who are condemned for their own sins. We are under the consequences of Adam's sin in two respects, as to position and as to nature. We are born far from God, and we have borne a nature at enmity with Him. The son of a man given up to dissipation is found in this double misfortune, that he is born fortuneless, and that he has a nature disposed to dissipation. As another comparison, suppose the Czar, for example, sends a man to Siberia because of rebellion, and he has a son born there, and of course fallen from the rights of a Russian subject. There, however, is the limit of the penalty he endures for the conduct of his father. But if he happens to show the enmity to the Czar which brought his father to exile, the Czar leaves him also in exile: this son of the proscribed abides in disgrace because of his personal enmity. Just so, we are born under guilt, but we cannot be guilty without sinning. The apostle avoids separating our fall in Adam—our state under the fall—from the state of the heart estranged from God. He does not sever guilt from the presence of sin in the individual. In the mystical sense employed about Levi in Heb. 7:9, 10, there need be no difficulty in saying that we sinned in Adam. However, this is evidently not the sense of the passage. Exclusively understood, it is contradicted by such scriptures as Ezek. 18:20, and Jer. 31:29, 30. Further, remark that there remains nothing to guard the conscience, the moment we make the sin of Adam the sole cause of our condemnation; for if we die for that sin, our conduct matters little!

Paul mentions here, as an existing fact, the presence of sin in the world. The twelfth verse gives the positive proof of the existence of sin in the world by the fact that death is there. Death is the sign of sin for which man is condemned, law or no law. The following verses appeal to the early inspired history which no Jew would dispute. Until law sin was in the world. There was then something more than Adam's sin. It is true that sin is not put to account where there is no law: still death reigned from Adam to Moses; and this demonstrated that sin was there, for death is the wages of sin, and not only of transgression. If man is under a law given by God and infringes it, his death is the necessary consequence. But without that, without law, when there was not this rule whereby God, in His government, imputes sin by virtue of a given law, it was clear that death reigned equally—that it attacked individuals who were not under the law: the proof too that they were under everlasting ruin also. Death reigned, he says, over those who had not sinned in the likeness of Adam's transgression (that is, over those who, in a different position from that of Adam and of the Jews, had sinned without the law). Paul groups together the position of the Jews and Adam, according to the true sense of Hos. 6:7, which charges the people with having acted like Adam. “But they, like (not “men,” but) Adam, have transgressed the covenant.” Both of these had a positive command, which each violated. But it was not so with sinners between the two points. They had died because they sinned, but it was not after the resemblance of Adam's transgression.

Adam is the type or the figure of the coming one—of Christ. Like the disobedience of Adam, the work of Christ has an effect on a great number of individuals. If death struck all men, as well those who sinned like Adam in the way of transgressing commands, as those who sinned otherwise, the remedy which the Lord Jesus Christ brings for sin has no less universal effects. The work of His death has a value which answers to man's state, whatever may be the form of the sin. The Jew died under the curse of the law—Christ has borne this curse. The Gentile, without law, died under sin—Christ by His death delivers him.

Ver. 15-17. There is, in these verses, a parallel instituted between sin in Adam and righteousness in Christ, a parallel by which are shown the extent and the excellency of Christ's work. As to the details we may remark the order as follows:-

Ver. 15. The roots of sin and grace. The subject is not shut up within the bounds of a Jewish question (Moses, the law, the prophets, &c.): it embraces a vaster extent. To judge of sin and grace, it is to Adam and Christ that we must go back.

Ver. 16. If the judgment was from one to condemnation, the free gift is from many offenses to accomplished righteousness. The principle of grace extends to the things as well as persons.

Ver. 17. The issues are then given. By one offense death reigned: much more shall those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life by the one, Jesus Christ. How rich the contrast! Not merely life reigns, but we shall reign ourselves in life.

The parenthesis which began with verse 13 closes here. In verse 18 the general reasoning is taken up in a peculiarly abstract way. “So then as [the bearing was] by one offense toward all men to condemnation, so by one accomplished righteousness [it is] toward all men to justification of life.” It is the direction of either act expressed abstractedly. We are always here in the parallel between Adam and Christ. Their acts have a bearing toward all men; but the tendency of Adam's act is to condemn, that of Christ's work is to justify.

It must be borne in mind that the point in this verse is not the application or actual effect; for in that case all men would be justified in justification of life, which is not the fact. All men are condemned; but it is for more than the simple imputation of Adam's sin, as the preceding chapters have shown. Likewise, as to justification, if there are individuals placed in the state which it indicates, this is in virtue of a moral fact which corresponds to it—even faith. From what sources flow these two conditions of man? From Adam and Christ, only while the acts of the one and the other are of similar bearing, we find that, when we come to fact, condemnation weighs on all, while justification is only the portion of some. Hence we see that after having said “all men” in verse 18, Paul changes his phrase and speaks of the “many” in verse 19. “For as by the disobedience of the one man the many have been constituted sinners, so also by the obedience of the one the many were constituted righteous.” This is because “all” are not definitively justified in Christ, though all are made sinners. Using the word “many,” or rather “the many,” in the second term of the parallel, he employs it in the first also for the correspondence of the subjects.

Ver. 20-21. But why, then, law? It “came in that (not sin but) the offense might abound; but where sin abounded, grace still more abounded, that as sin reigned in (the power of) death, so also grace might reign through righteousness, to everlasting life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” If justice reigned, as sin has reigned by death, it would have been all over with us: we should have been under the penalties. But grace reigns. The contrast is established between God and man, not between sin and righteousness, and God exercises His sovereign right in grace; and this to life everlasting, instead of governing this world according to the Jewish system. Save certain glimmerings in eternal life, the Jews in general looked at life on this side of death. Here God, far from sanctioning unrighteousness, justifies in His grace through Jesus, and gives eternal life above and beyond death.

Chap. 6. We have in this chapter the second of the three things we have already indicated—the life. The apostle's doctrine is, that we are brought into God's presence by death and resurrection in virtue of the work which Christ therein accomplished. We believe in Him who raised up Christ from among the dead: Can we live in the sin to which we are dead? It is to contradict oneself and one's baptism. But if I am baptized into Christ, it is as having part in His death (for there it is that I have this righteousness in which He appears before God, and I in him), Now it is to sin that He is dead; and I am brought into the participation of this divine and perfect righteousness by having part in death unto sin. It is impossible, therefore, that it should he to live in sin, though, no doubt, the flesh would like that. “Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” All that is in God was interested in the resurrection of Christ. At the cross, God (not the Father, as such, but God) was glorified; His holiness, love, righteousness, plainly witnessed by the death of the just one, were there fully magnified. But in the resurrection of Christ all that God was in His glory, and the Father in His relationship as Father, was displayed and put in exercise.

The question here is not motive, nor duty merely but the nature of the blessing in which we participate, and of which Christian baptism is the expression. The Christian's life is quite new and the walk flows from it. Death and resurrection with Christ is his present portion. Our old man (ver. 6) has been crucified with him, that the body of sin might be rendered null, that we might no longer serve sin. Death gives quittance from sin (ver. 7).

Ver. 10. The obedience of Christ was put to the proof up to the end, till there rested no more than death; and He preferred to die rather than fail in obedience, which would have been yielding to sin. Far from yielding, He died; He completed His obedience in death; and by it He has done with sin in every way. He has only to do with God. We, too, should appropriate this by faith (ver. 11), and reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Hence the clear and solemn exhortations of verses 12, 13, “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.” But mark well that the source of practical power (and that is the question) is in grace: “sin shall not have dominion over you, FOR you are not under grace.” If God and sin are in question, doubtless God is found the strongest!

Ver. 15. It is owned that grace is an occasion for the flesh, not for the Christian to walk according to the flesh. Observe how, in this chapter, Paul reduces the flesh to silence: Shall we sin (ver. 1) to show greater grace? No, for that would be no longer the grace which annulled our sins to save us. Shall we sin (ver. 15) since grace delivers from the law, and we are no longer under its slavery? No, for in that we should become slaves in another way.

Ver. 16. While it is by righteousness outside us that we are justified, this righteousness is identified in us, notwithstanding, with practical righteousness. Its character is obedience, and obedience is learned of Christ. If 1 forbid my son to do something he would like to do, and I am heeded, I say, There is an obedient child; but Christ's obedience is quite another thing. Never had God to stop Him in the movement of His soul, for that movement was always the very will of God. Our obedience is on the same principle. We are elect to the obedience of Jesus Christ, i.e., to that same obedience (1 Peter 1). We have also to obey Jesus; but here it is the obedience of Jesus Christ. Obedience owns the authority of another, binding to the person, and not merely to the precept. So 1 Cor. 9:21, “lawfully subject to Christ.”

Ver. 19. The contrary is here spoken of—lawlessness—the act not only of disobeying a recognized authority, but of not owning the authority itself. The lawlessness produced nothing, but stops in itself. Obedience bears fruit unto holiness. By it one is in connection with God, and its effect is holiness. In verse 20 there is an “end” but no fruits. The end is death.

Ver. 22. The present fruit of obedience is holiness. and the end eternal life. We possess eternal life and we make towards it for the end. Such is the enigma of Christianity: we have not and we have.

Chap. 7. We have seen the deliverance of the believer as to guilt (chap. 5), and as to life (chap. 6). In the seventh chapter we have deliverance with regard to the law. Thus these three chapters give, taken together, deliverance as to the guilt of sin, as to the power of sin, and as to the law which binds upon us both these things From the details of chaps. 5, 6 we have also seen that it is always on the principle of death and resurrection that our deliverance rests. It is the same in the seventh chapter.

The Christian, or, to say better, the believer, has part in Christ as a dead Christ, and lives, in that' Christ is raised from the dead. Now the law has only power over a man as long as he lives. In bringing out the effect of this truth, the apostle uses the example of the law of marriage. The woman would be an adulteress if she were married to another while her husband was alive, but when her husband is dead she is free. In this illustration, the husband died; but in application to us, the law does not lose its force, its rights, by dying, but by our dying. The law does not die (for in that case sin would be free), but we, by the body of Christ, are dead to the law.

Ver. 6. “But now we are dead from the law, having died in that in which we were held, so that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in oldness of letter.” in Gal. 2:19 it is the same thing differently expressed. There our death to the law is attributed to the law itself. “I through the law am dead to the law.” A man suffocated in a room owes his death to the room itself, but by the very fact he is also dead to this room. We are dead to the law; it has no more rights over us. Notwithstanding, if we were freed from it without a sufficient authority, we should become ἄνομοι,without law, without restraint. But in Christ we have a good authority for being free. In Him, on the cross, our responsibility before God was settled. In Him risen, we partake of a new life which bears its fruits, and for which the system of law no longer exists.

We must not confound the principle of law, under which the responsibility of man before God, as to righteousness, is guarded, with the system of ordinances blotted out by the death of Christ. There is the authority of God, and the authority of the lawgiver. As to man, he is necessarily under responsibility before God, whatever may be the particular circumstances which are attached to that responsibility. The law of Moses, for example, is an application of man's responsibility; it is by it that God has illustrated, on a large scale, this principle of law. And what we almost always find in the Old Testament is the law. In the subject which occupies us Paul generalizes; he reasons on the principle of law, without confining himself to the law of Moses, although he sometimes quotes it. The Romans, to whom he says, “ye have been made dead to the law by the body of Christ,” had never been put under Moses' law, with the exception of a few Jews among them.

God could never do otherwise than give a law which man could not possibly accomplish, seeing that when He gave it, man was already under sin; and God could not give a law which should tolerate sin. Moreover, whatever rule He gives to man, it is always according to the divine perfection, and consequently a rule that man cannot accomplish.

After the seventh verse, we have the details of the experience which is made of the law when it acts on a man in whom are found the two natures—the flesh and the inner man Is the law sin, that we are withdrawn from its authority? But it gave the knowledge of sin and imputed it. The apostle says that he would not have understood that the mere impulse of his nature was sin if the law had not said, “thou shalt not covet.” But the commandment gave sin the occasion to attack the soul. Sin, that evil principle of our nature, making use of the commandment to provoke the soul to the sin that is forbidden, (but which it took occasion to suggest by the interdiction itself, acting also on the will which resisted the interdiction,) produced all manner of concupiscence.

Ver. 9. “I was alive without law once.” Paul does not mean to indicate by this a state in which he himself had been. It is a great principle which he demonstrates by personifying it, as he says elsewhere, “these things I have in a figure transferred to myself and Apollos.” That does not designate any individual—it is every man.

We may remark three characters of sin—lawlessness, transgression, and hatred. These characters, for instance, might be seen in the following circumstances of the conduct of a child. First, he runs about the streets, instead of going to school. His father forbids him to leave the house, and the child, without taking heed to the interdiction, runs in the streets all the same. Lastly, his father entreats him, on the ground of his love as a father, and the son replies by giving him a blow. In these three cases, he has successively followed his wrong desires, and infringed his father's order, and despised his love. This last case is the consummation of sin.

Ver. 9, 10. If one calls oneself under law, without acknowledging oneself condemned, it weakens the authority of the law. One sometimes hears this profession from the mouths of Christians, “I am saved by grace, I am not under the law except for my conduct; doubtless, I fail in it, but God is merciful.” That is not the question. The law condemns. You have sinned, and you are cursed. “The commandment which was for life was found by me itself [to be] unto death.” “Do this and live” became death, by showing the exigencies of God to a sinful nature, whose will rejected them and to a conscience which could not but accept the just condemnation. Therefore the law is good and holy, since it forbade the sin, but in condemning the sinners. “Did then that which is good become death to me? Far be the thought. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death to me by that which is good; in order that sin might, by the commandment, become exceedingly sinful (13). “For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am fleshly, sold under sin.” (14). This last is individual experience. Speaking of Christians, as such, Paul would not say, “we are fleshly,” because he ought always to see the saints in Christ. In the case where, addressing the Corinthian believers, he said, “you are carnal,” it was when he had to look at them in a particular circumstance—when they walked as men of this world. To be in the flesh is to be before God in the condition of the first Adam. We are in the Spirit when we are in the second Adam, because it is in this position that we receive the Spirit.

The first thing, then, noticed is the attack of sin, personified as one that seizes the opportunity of the law to drive him in the contrary direction, and thus on God's part slay him in the conscience of what the law forbade. Next the apostle presents the experience of a soul under the law—not the conflict between the two natures, which still goes on when the Holy Ghost dwells in us, as shown in Gal. 6 but the effect of the law if permitted to have its way even where the heart is renewed. It will be remarked, accordingly, that neither Christ nor the Spirit is named till the question of deliverance appears. In verses 14, 17, and 20, the I is emphatic. It is the individual case which is supposed and reasoned out. The evil here is want of power where the desires are good: so that the better they are, the more miserable the person is. The question of guilt is over, but the soul discovers that it has no strength. In verse 23, the law means, not a rule imposed, but one acting always in the same way.

Ver. 24. “O wretched man that I [am]! who shall deliver me out of this body of death?” The soul sees that it has neither righteousness nor power: it is in despair as to this, and looks around, not saying, How shall I? but Who shall deliver me?” It finds at once in God a deliverance already prepared in Jesus. It is not even that God will deliver: the deliverance is wrought, and he gives thanks. Such is what happens always when, in the travail of conscience, there is the action of the Holy Spirit: then one is in quest of God, even when one is yet shrouded in a great deal of darkness.

It is, on one side, remarkable to see how, in order to get free from its embarrassment, this troubled soul cries out, “Who shall deliver me?” “It ceases saying, “Who will make me better?” It seeks nothing more in itself; it wants and asks a deliverance to come from without—a deliverance indeed. On the other side, it is also remarkable to see how suddenly it can say with joy, “I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

What is described here is the natural and necessary result of the law, when the conscience is awakened. The sense of unanswered responsibility, and the lack of peace, turns the soul in upon itself. Hence self is so prominent from verse 14, after speaking of general Christian knowledge (“we know”). It is introduced as a sort of parenthesis, to show the wretched condition to which grace applies, and from which it only can deliver, through Jesus Christ. Ver. 25 is the Christian state, characterized by deliverance. But the fullness of it is developed in the next chapter.

Chap. 8. This chapter is divided into three parts, and presents the following subjects:-1St, the Spirit considered as life (1-15); 2nd, the Spirit seen personally dwelling in the Christian—God in us (16-27); and 3rd, God for us (28-39).

Ver. 1. “There is therefore” The beginning of the chapter is a consequence of all that has been proved in chaps. 5, 6, and 7. Deliverance in Christ (chap. 5) is not touched by the flesh (chap. 6) nor by the law (chap. 7). As to these different points, all is ordered in the way of deliverance. Observe, too, that the three first verses of our chapter answer to the three preceding chapters—first to chap. 5, second to chap. 6., and third to chap. 7. The great point here is the justification of life—our new position in Christ outside the judgment of God, which has, as it were, spent itself for us in the blood and cross. Condemnation fell on Christ crucified; but now He is risen, God being glorified in the way in which He suffered and atoned for our sins, and not a debt of ours unpaid.

Ver. 2. As Christ now stands, all wrath past, in the full favor of God, such is the position of the Christian before God; “for the law of the Spirit of life has set me free from the law of sin and death.” It is not a question of experience, but the fruit of what God has wrought in Christ and given to us in the new life wherewith we are quickened.

Ver. 3, 4. “For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God having sent his own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin (i.e., as a sacrifice for sin), has condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to flesh but according to Spirit.” The Greek phrase, “for sin,” is an expression derived from the Septuagint (Leviticus Num. 8, &c. Comp. also Heb. 10:6). The grand thing here is not merely the forgiveness of sinful acts, but the deliverance which God has wrought for the believer in respect of the sin which is in his nature. God has, in Christ, executed sentence upon this root of sin; so that this sin has no title whatever against us; nay, it exists no more for the conscience between the soul and God, however we have to watch, and judge, and fight against it. Thus the Christian life is united inseparably with deliverance from condemnation by grace, and this in virtue of the resurrection of Christ. The law could only condemn the sinner God, acting in grace, has condemned the sin, and delivered the sinner. The practical result for him is that, being freed, he walks in love, and that is the fulfilling of the law. Holiness is produced by the Spirit in the ways; for it is the Spirit, not the law, which characterizes the Christian and gives him power. Ver. 4, then, is a transition from the position in which grace has set us before God to the practical life in which this grace places and conducts the Christian. While they are distinct, absolute righteousness and practical righteousness cannot be severed. The first comes to us from Christ dead on the cross; the second from Christ living in us.

Ver. 5 indicates the moral categories—not the duty merely, but the tendency and sure action of the nature whether in those according to the flesh, or in those according to the Spirit.

Ver. 6 gives the respective results—death, and life, and peace: as 7 presents the deep, moral reason—the mind of the flesh is enmity against God, and hence necessarily rebellious when tested by His law. The conclusion, ver. 9, is clear: those that are in flesh (i.e., natural men) cannot please God. The law could only regulate their responsibility and condemn their failure, instead of delivering them.

Ver. 9 puts us, Christians as such, entirely outside the first Adam. We belong no more to that existence. The principle of our relations with God is not the flesh but the Spirit. If God's Spirit dwell in us, we are not in flesh but in Spirit, though the flesh is still in us. Thus is a new life given, a new man formed. The man has the Spirit of Christ: if not, he is none of His. Whatever be the sovereign grace of God, there is in Christianity a practical realization through the Spirit of Christ. We “are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works.”

Ver. 10. “If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin.” The body can only produce sin. Now, on account of Christ, the Christian accounts it as dead. If it act in its living will, there is nothing but sin. The body is only an instrument of righteousness so far as it is dead. But the Spirit is life because of righteousness. By the fact that Christ is in us, the Spirit is our life. He produces only righteousness.

Ver. 11. The resurrection of the saints falls under a spiritual principle which distinguishes it entirely from the resurrection of the rest of men. Three things may be remarked in these verses relating to the Spirit, (1) He is called “the Spirit of God” abiding in us, so that we are not in the flesh. It is the Holy Spirit in opposition to the old man. (2) The Spirit of Christ as the formal character of the life morally. It is the Spirit, as the formative agent of the new man, or the perfect life of Christ in man. And (3) He is the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead; not only the opposition to the flesh of man—not only effects in man; but a state perfect and definitive in resurrection. In this way we are finally delivered from this body of death, and get the full answer to the question of chap. 7:24, “Who shall deliver me?” The very body is to be set free by the power of God acting as He did in Christ's resurrection by the Spirit.

Ver. 12,13. Whatever be His gifts and favors toward man, God never changes in the first elements of righteousness and holiness. It is extremely important to maintain these great principles in all their force.

Ver. 14, 15. But those led by God's Spirit are sons of God. We have received a spirit of sonship, whereby we cry, Abba Father.

Ver. 16-26. We are arrived at that part of the subject which considers the Spirit as personally indwelling in the saints. Two things are said of His operations in them. First, inasmuch as He has made us His dwelling, He is the power which introduces us into the knowledge and enjoyment of our privileges. Next, since we, through our bodies, suffer in the midst of a suffering creation, He takes part in our infirmities. He is the power of that which is new, namely of grace and its riches, and He is the consolation of that which is old, namely, the consolation of our souls in the midst of a state of things resulting from the fall.

Ver. 16. “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.” This passage, which, in experience leaves no difficulty, presents one when it is a question of saying what it means. If I separate from my spirit the witness of the Spirit of God, I leave no witness at all. If I receive the witness of the Spirit, then I have two; I have the certainty in my own spirit that I am a child of God, and I have besides the witness of that Spirit which works in us as the Spirit of adoption. It is the Spirit of God in us who gives to our spirit the strength to say that we are children of God.

Ver. 17. The relation of child of God, formed in our hearts by the Spirit of adoption, having been named, the privileges which belong to children are afterward brought out. The first of the privileges mentioned is that of our participation in the inheritance of God. We are “heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ.” But the saints, before they receive the inheritance, have to tread a road which is sown with sorrows. Sufferings mark their path towards the glory which is to come. Suffering for Christ is not exactly the subject here; it is suffering with Christ. A spiritual man cannot do other than suffer with Christ, because he will feel things as Christ felt them.

Ver. 19-21. We are brought into liberty; this is the subject of the chapter. But creation has nothing to do with the liberty of the grace which we enjoy. In order that it may be delivered, glory must come. Then the creation, brought into captivity through the sin of man, will be delivered from the bondage of corruption. Meanwhile it groans and travails. The Christian is the channel through which these groans ascend to God. The Lord Himself, when upon earth, knew what were these groans. He groaned at the tomb of Lazarus and was heard.

Ver. 22. There is something unutterable in the condition of the Christian. On the one hand he is connected with the dust; on the other he bears within him the divine nature. He can thus, in a practical manner, express before God all the sufferings of this creation.

Ver. 26. This is a wonderful experience of the child of God, in which meet, at the same time, our heart, the new life, and the Holy Ghost. In the midst of the confusion of visible things, our hearts, under the impression received from them, and in the consciousness of the good which is in God, send forth groans. But God gathers up these groans, for they are an intercession which is pleasing to Him. They come from the Holy Spirit dwelling in our hearts quickened by grace. And the vessel into which the Holy Ghost puts so excellent a thing is, nevertheless, a human heart.

Ver. 27. “He maketh intercession for the saints according to God” —not in a selfish manner, which would lead one only to think of oneself, but associating us with the groans of creation.

Ver. 2S. So far we have seen in this chapter the work of God in us. We pass now to another point; the work of God for us.

Ver. 29. He has predestinated them “to be conformed to the image of his Son.” This counsel is not at all dependence upon a foresight by which God would know that we should succeed in becoming conformed to Christ. It is a purpose which was reserved in God—a purpose which He has had of rendering us conformed to the image of His Son. It is very sweet to see our happiness thus flowing from the divine will.

Ver. 30 “Whom he called, them he also justified; whom he justified, them he also glorified.” All these blessings belong to the work of God for us—to His acts accomplished outside us, according to His determinate counsel. In this list, sanctification is not mentioned. It is not said, as in 1 Cor. 6:2, “washed, sanctified, justified.” We see by this verse of the epistle to the Corinthians, that sanctification takes its place before justification. As soon as truth has reached us, the first effect that it produces is to set us apart; an operation which is accomplished by the action of the word upon us, by regeneration, &c. Thus set apart by divine action, we are sanctified; after that, God justifies us. Three facts are to be remarked in sanctification—we are sanctified by God the Father, sanctified through the blood of Christ, and sanctified by the Holy Ghost. The Father, in the thoughts of His sovereign grace, has determined this condition for us; the blood has redeemed us, and the Holy Spirit forms us in holiness. Practical sanctification must be added; the stone taken from the quarry is afterward fashioned for taking its place in the building Ver. 31-32. In these words, the Holy Spirit brings out the full extent of the liberality and the free-giving of God. He draws consequences from this liberality, and he concludes by the certainty of grace, and of the security of the saints. “God is for us.” He has shown it by giving His Son, and delivering Him up to death for us all. When man reasons upon sacred things, he arrives at different conclusions. Making himself the starting point, he judges of God by himself, and finds in result uncertainty. Here there is nothing vague; faith is surrounded with certainties.

Ver. 33-38. The Holy Ghost is still drawing consequences from the perfect grace of God. Taking in the circumstances of the saints, their weakness, &c., and measuring the extent of the difficulties that they may meet with in this world, he concludes once more with their perfect security. No accusation against them is possible: they are the elect of God; nor any condemnation, for it is God Himself who has justified them. And as to the difficulties which may arise on their way, there are none which are not known to Christ, and subordinate to the power of that Savior who loved these chosen ones and gave Himself for them.

Ver. 39. “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?” Paul here puts forth a challenge, as we see the Lord giving one to Satan in favor of Joshua (Zech. 3). “Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?” The answer is in the question, “who will dare to accuse these persons before God? It is God who justifies” —God who has elected them.

Ver. 33, 34. Read, punctuating as follows— “It is God who justifies; who is he that condemns?” Justification and condemnation are put in contrast.

Ver. 35 and 37. These three verses are delicious. In the midst of so many sorrows, calculated to separate us from the love of Christ, it is precisely there that we meet with this faithful Savior. In tribulation..... He has passed through it, He is with us in it, &c.

Ver. 38, 39. Paul, in terminating this unfolding of the Christian condition, names the strongest things which could dare to rise up against the saints, and only sees in them powerless obstacles in presence of the love that God has shown us in Jesus Christ. This eighth chapter, as it has been expressed, sets out by saying “no condemnation,” and ends by adding “no separation.”

Sanctification

The believer is sanctified through and in Christ; and it is his sanctification in Him which is the source of all practical holiness. He is holy; and therefore is to be “holy in all manner of conversation.” This principle has ever been the same. God has separated from existing evil to Himself, and then given a variety of directions to keep the so separated person in practical separation. (See, as to Israel's sanctification, Lev. 20:24-26.) Sanctification now, is God's separation of individuals from the world unto Himself in Christ, so that the so separated are no more of the world, even as Christ is no more of the world, for they are in Him, as risen.

The Scriptural Museum — Inaugural Lecture by Sir H. Rawlinson

The lectures of this new Museum were opened on the evening of January 8th, by the well known Oriental explorer. On the platform were a model of Nebuchadnezzar's temple, and a slab inscribed with cuneiform characters. The Subject was— “Recent Oriental discoveries in relation to the Bible.” Sir H. Rawlinson began by urging the great value of the visible and tangible illustrations of scripture history, which recent researches had brought to light.

For 2000 years the Bible had rested chiefly on internal evidence, and that evidence was, indeed, sufficient for all earnest and truth-seeking people. But there were others who would not be at the pains to examine internal evidence, and to them these extraneous corroborations of Biblical statements might speak powerfully. The cuneiform inscriptions, the key to deciphering which had only been discovered within the last twenty years, had brought to light a great variety of Assyrian and Babylonian historic records, running contemporaneously with scripture narrative, and affording innumerable points of contact; and wherever such contact occurred, there was always found to be a coincidence between the two, showing incontestably the genuineness and authenticity of scripture. Coming to details, he adduced proofs of correspondence between the statements of the inspired volume and the deductions from monumental inscriptions in several leading particulars, under the heads of ethnology, mythology, geography, and history.

The earliest period, to which the inscriptions on the cylinders and tablets he had found positively referred, was about 2000 years before Christ, though there were some indications of the time before the Flood. Thus, Babylonia, to which the early portion of scripture history refers, was called the country of the four rivers, and those rivers he believed to signify the Tigris and Euphrates, with their two principal branches. The whole country of Assyria had been excavated in the course of his researches, and cylinders, tablets, and prisms had been extracted from the ruins of the ancient temples, filled with inscriptions, which had now been deciphered; and in many instances, they served not only to verify scripture, but to throw light upon and explain passages which had hitherto been obscure. It appeared from these inscriptions, that, in the earliest time, a colony had been led by Nimrod from Egypt into Mesopotamia. [1] Nimrod was a Cushite, and belonged to the family of Ham. He was afterward worshipped as a divinity, by the name of Nergal, (2 Kings 17:30,) whose attributes were equivalent to those of Mars. The inscriptions enabled Sir H. to explain the meaning of many names of early scripture history, all of which were significant. Thus, Rem, Ham, and Japheth signified the parts of the country they inhabited. The meaning of Ham was the right hand, indicating that he lived in Arabia; Shem signified the left, or Assyria; and Japheth was the intermediate country. The names of Europe and Asia are purely Babylonian, meaning the setting and the rising of the sun, which names were afterward adopted by the Greeks. The name Shinar was really a Hammite name of the country; and after the people of Nimrod had been driven into the mountains they took the name of Shinar with them. Sir H. said that the descendants of Ham were in the habit of counting by sixties. They divided day and night into sixty hours instead of twenty-four hours. It is a remarkable fact, he observed, that the Indians also reckoned by sixties, which indicated a connection between the Chaldees and Indians of which there are no records. The inscriptions throw light on the meaning of the names of the gods of Babylon, and show, by the functions assigned to their gods, their representatives in the mythology of the Greeks and Romans. The names of the gods sometimes signified sentences, of which the first syllable Was the name, the second was the verb, and the third the object.

The inscriptions, he said, present a complete tableau of ancient Assyria, by which the name and situation of every town of note mentioned in the Bible can be identified. Sir Henry addressed himself specially to the historical coincidences extending over a period of 2000 years. He had found the record of a king corresponding with the Chedorlaomer of Gen. 14, 1900 years B.C., and who was described by the epithet “the ravager of Syria.” For about 1000 years after this there was no point of contact between profane and sacred history, but this Sir Henry accounted for from the circumstance that, during that period, there was no inducement for intercourse between the Assyrians and the Jews. The circumstances disclosed relating to the mode of government of Northern Arabia verified the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon, for it appeared that that country was ruled by queens, and not by kings. One of the most interesting periods in relation to which coincidences had been discovered related to that of Sennacherib and Hezekiah. The explorations had brought to light the annals of Sennacherib, written by himself, or by his direction, occupying 800 lines; and the account they gave of his first campaign, when he was pacified by a tribute, corresponded in the most striking manner with 2 Kings 18. To illustrate this Sir Henry read passages from the chapter, and then from the annals, showing minute correspondences in the names of places, especially Lachish, the amount of tribute received from the Jewish king, “three hundred talents of silver and thirty pieces of gold” (ver. 14), and so forth. It appeared from this inscription, however, that upwards of 200000 Jews were taken into captivity by Sennacherib after that first campaign, and Sir Henry Rawlinson expressed the opinion that there were four distinct captivities of the Jews. There occurs in Sennacherib's account of his wars with Hezekiah, the remarkable passage, “Then I prayed to God,” which is the only instance in the whole of the inscriptions in which the Deity is mentioned without some heathen adjunct. One of the latest excavations brought to light inscriptions referring to the time of Nebuchadnezzar. It was made in the ruins of the Tower of Nimrod, which was supposed by some to be the Tower of Babel. These cylinders, besides other interesting records, threw light on a point regarding Belshazzar which had hitherto appeared obscure, for no such name occurs in any ancient history but that of the Bible. It appeared, however, that Belshazzar was joint king with his father Minus, and that he shut himself in Babylon, whilst the other king, his father, took refuge elsewhere. Profane historians have not mentioned Belshazzar, because he was considered subordinate to his father. Sir Henry, having mentioned other numerous facts, concluded by a renewed expression of his sense of the importance of these discoveries, viewed more especially as a practical refutation of the mythical theories of German Neologians. We had by this means evidence at once visible and convincing to verify the statements of holy writ, and it was not the language of pride or boasting to say that he felt great satisfaction in being, with others, an humble instrument under God in strengthening the authority of His word, so far as external evidence could go.

At the recent Meeting of the Asiatic Society, Sir H. Rawlinson exhibited twenty-four sheets of cuneiform inscriptions, as part of a great work he was editing for the British Museum. The legend belonged to Tiglath-Pileser, and dated from the twelfth century (s.c.), referring to a restored temple in the city, carrying back the Chaldean Chronology to the eighteenth century (s.c.), together with an enumeration of the four immediate ancestors of the king, and a record of his conquest of Egypt and of the submission of the Chismonians, who inhabited Phenicia before the Semitic colonization of the country. The second inscription, it was stated, would contain the annals of the great Sardanapalus, recovered from the temple of Hercules on the great mound of Nimrud, which is now known to represent the Calneh of the Bible. The third inscription exhibited was a copy of the famous cylinder or hexagonal prism of Sennacherib, found at Nineveh, and now deposited in the British Museum. He gave it as his opinion that there was as much accuracy in his system of interpretation as in that by which Latin and Greek texts were read,

The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament

This name is given to that ancient Greek translation of the Bible which was executed in Egypt sometime before the advent of Christ, and which was called the Septuagint (that is, the seventy), because of the tradition that it was performed by that number of translators.

This version had obtained so high a reputation—in many cases quite superseding the original Hebrew—that numberless incredible stories were once extant as to its origin. These have been rejected by modern research: and the following is generally allowed to have been the true account.

The Ptolemies—especially Ptolemy Philadelphus not only patronized Greek learning, and strove to make their metropolis Alexandria the literary, as well as the commercial, center of the world; but they were also very anxious to cultivate the friendship of the Jews, whose country, consisting of a succession of natural fastnesses, has ever formed an important outpost of Egypt. Both literary curiosity, therefore, and political prudence, conspired in making those kings desirous to possess, in the vulgar tongue, the venerable law of the Jews. Hence Ptolemy Philadelphus (or his father—it is uncertain which) requested of the high priest at Jerusalem to procure competent scribes for him, who might translate the laws of Moses from the Hebrew into the Greek. The translation, thus effected, became one of the valuable treasures he had collected in his library at Alexandria. Its composition must have been somewhere about the year 280 B.C. It seems to have been gradually followed at different times by translations of other parts of the Jewish Scriptures; and the whole, executed indeed by various hands, was completed sometime before the advent of Christ.

This is the simple account, in substance quoted by one Aristobulus, who is cited by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History; and it is corroborated in the Prologue to the Apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus, written (as the author there tells us) in the time of Ptolemy Physcon, rather more than 100 years before Christ. From 280 B.C. to 120 B.C. may therefore be safely taken as the period of its execution. And we may be satisfied that the law of Moses was translated by royal command, to which the rest of the book was gradually added.

This Alexandrian or Septuagint version, being thus made in the common speech of the East, was read even in Palestine, where Greek had become the ordinary language of intercourse. It alone is quoted by the philosopher Philo, and the historian Josephus: and (which is of more interest to us) the writers of the New Testament almost constantly refer to it: for at that epoch it stood in the same relation to the Hebrew as our common English version does, and was therefore used by all who wrote books for universal perusal.

On account of its celebrity, the most extravagant stories were current as to its source. Josephus says that seventy-two elders were chosen for the work, six from each tribe, and that their labors occupied exactly seventy-two days. Philo even asserts that these seventy-two men were shut up in separate cells; that each of them-translated the entire Bible, apart from all intercourse with his coadjutors; and that these seventy-two independent translations were found to agree exactly, in every particular, with each other. These marvelous fables seem to have been invented, for the purpose of giving to this version the authority of the high priest, and of the council at Jerusalem. They obtained nearly universal credit, as is evident from the fact that the name of Septuagint (i.e., seventy), arose from the fiction of the seventy-two elders. There is no doubt that these stories are fictitious, for there is positive internal evidence that the several books were executed at different times, and by different hands; and indeed there are strong reasons for believing that the translators were natives of Alexandria, and not of Palestine.

There can be little doubt that our Lord and his apostles referred to this version, when they quoted the ancient Scriptures. It was for many ages the only Bible known in the Church. Very few Christians, indeed, before the Reformation era, knew anything of the Hebrew language, or suspected the existence of a Hebrew Bible. All old translations of the Bible were made (with the exception of the Syriac) from this. The Vulgate, for centuries the authorized text in the Latin church, was made from the Septuagint, and not directly from the Hebrew. And from the first, the Greek church has never acknowledged any other version except this venerable translation, now more than 2,000 years old.

It must be remembered that the Hebrew original, and the Greek translation, have come to us through two absolutely independent, and even hostile channels. The Hebrew we owe entirely to the Jews; our copies are simply what they have given to us. Whereas the Septuagint has reached us through the hands of the Christian church. These two guardians of the Scriptures had no intercourse whatever with each other. And their united testimony is of the strongest possible description. Where they differ, as they occasionally do, in unimportant details, we have only the firmer confidence that these two venerable recensions have descended to us by quite separate streams. And it may be observed that these differences, however embarrassing they may be to the critic, are really of no consequence to the Christian. We may hesitate in pronouncing sentence upon those points where the two versions are at variance; but every item of our faith is unaffected by them. We might cast out every passage where they do not agree, without shaking a single article out of the Creed.

Looking upon the matter, however, with the eye of the critic, opinions are divided as to which of these is to be preferred. Till the reformation, there was no doubt at all about this subject. The Latin church knew and recognized only the Vulgate; the Greek church only the Septuagint; the reformers, with one voice, preferred the Jewish Old Testament to what was only a translation of a translation from it. They have been followed by most modern scholars. Of late, however, some among ourselves have seen reason for giving precedence to the Septuagint over the Hebrew; and they ground their judgment mainly upon the circumstance, that our Lord and his apostles quoted, almost uniformly, from the Greek version.

But, in reality, no conclusion ought to be drawn from this. The founders of Christianity, as a thing of course, quoted from the Bible in common use, which was the Septuagint at that time. And whenever this Septuagint differs from the Hebrew in an important respect (as when some point of doctrine is concerned), then it will be found that the quotation comes from the Hebrew, Thus, in the beginning of Matthew's Gospel, the names in our Lord's genealogy are spelled as the Septuagint spells them; for it was of no importance which way they were written. Whereas, in the second chapter, the quotation from Hosea, “Out of Egypt I have called my son,” is from the Hebrew, and not from the Septuagint, which has “Out of Egypt I have called his children,” and which does not convey a sense applicable to Christ.

In all probability, the Hebrew text represents the recension used in the synagogues everywhere except in Egypt; while the Septuagint was another edition, in private use, also read in the synagogues by the Hellenists of Alexandria. This supposition is corroborated by the fact, that the existing Targums, or Aramaic paraphrases (which arose from the custom of interpreting the Hebrew into the vulgar tongue of Palestine, during the synagogue service), agree not with the Septuagint, but with the Hebrew.

It seems to follow necessarily that the synagogue edition must have been the authorized copy. The Septuagint must have occupied the same place as our own English version now does; very good and excellent, doubtless, but yet containing some faults, which at once prevent its being put into the same rank with the original. We have, moreover, positive assurance that the Jews have taken the most scrupulous, and even superstitious, care of their text; so that accidental mistakes in transcription are hardly supposable; and we are as sure that the Greek text has never been so carefully preserved, and is faulty in many places.

There are two parts of the New Testament which follow the Septuagint exactly, even where this differs decidedly from the Hebrew. These two parts are the speech of Stephen, recorded in the seventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistle to the Hebrews. In both of these documents we are certain that we are reading the words of men who had the Septuagint translation, and not the Hebrew original, in their hands. Stephen, we know, was a deacon of the Grecians (i.e. of the Hellenists—the very community which produced this version). And there are unmistakable marks, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, of its having been written by a native of Alexandria, the birth-place of the Septuagint. Now, in each of these two documents, the name Jesus occurs in rather an embarrassing manner. In Stephen's speech, we are told of the “tabernacle of witness, which our fathers brought in with Jesus into the possession of the Gentiles.” And in the fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, we read, “If Jesus had given them rest.” In both of these places it is Joshua that is meant, of which name Jesus is only the Greek form, and is the form always used in the Septuagint.

Then again Stephen speaks of 75 persons going down to Egypt with Jacob; whereas our copies of the Book of Genesis distinctly assert that there were but 70. The truth is, that our English Bible here follows the Hebrew, whereas Stephen quoted the Septuagint. Then in the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, we find the following quotation from Psa. 40 “Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not; but a body hast thou prepared me"; and yet on returning to the 40th Psalm itself in our Bibles, we find the expression to be, “Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears past thou opened"; which is a literal translation from the Hebrew of the Psalm in question, and different from what we read in the Epistle. But if we refer to the Septuagint version of the 40th Psalm, we at once see that the passage, as it stands in the Epistle to the Hebrews, was taken directly from it.

The Psalms in our English Prayer Books are taken from an older translation than the Psalms are which appear in our English Bibles; and as all modern translations started from the Septuagint (through the Vulgate), and by degrees were brought nearer and nearer to the Hebrew; so the Prayer-book Psalms, taken from Archbishop Parker's translation of 1568, lean much more towards the Septuagint than do the Bible Psalms, which were not translated till 1611. If we compare Psa. 14 in one of these English versions with Psa. 14 in the other version, we shall be able very easily to see one instance where the Hebrew and the Septuagint are at variance. In the Prayer-book, this 14th Psalm has eleven verses; in the Bible it has but seven; the former following the Septuagint, the latter the Hebrew. And we shall also find that Paul, when he quotes this Psalm in the third chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, agrees with the Prayer-book version, i.e., with the Septuagint.

In some other respects we may readily perceive the influence of the old Greek edition on our modern editions. The names we give to the five books of Moses are unknown in the Hebrew Bible, which calls the books by the first words in each. They appeared first in the Septuagint, then they were transferred to the Vulgate, and from that to our modern Bibles.

There is another trace of the Septuagint, which is much more serious. The Jews, from time immemorial, never pronounce the word Jehovah, or write it in any but in the Hebrew characters. Now the translators of the Septuagint were Jews, imbued with the common prejudice of their nation. In consequence the word Jehovah does not at once appear in the Septuagint; it is invariably rendered by Κνριος, or Lord, which was a common title of respect between man and man. This peculiarity passed into the Vulgate, where Dominus is the equivalent term for Jehovah; and, for some unexplained reason—probably on account of the influence exercised by learned Jews over the reformers—it has been almost always retained in our common English Bibles. From this circumstance, a great deal of the meaning of the Bible is sometimes neglected; and the proper name of the invisible God does not appear where it ought to be. In our printed Bibles, it will be seen that when Lord stands for Jehovah, it consists of four capital letters, thus—LORD.

The writers of the Septuagint were all Jews, and therefore never wrote the word Jehovah with Greek letters. The word Jehovah never once occurs in the entire New Testament. There is no kind of doubt that they used the title Κνριος, or the LORD, just as the Septuagint translators had done—as a well-understood equivalent for Jehovah. And when this title of LORD became, in an emphatic manner, fixed upon the Redeemer, he was thereby proclaimed to be Jehovah.

As might have been expected, the text of the Septuagint was never so carefully preserved as that of the Hebrew. From an early epoch it seems to have been in an imperfect condition. At the beginning of the third century of the Christian era, the illustrious Origen devoted a large portion of his life to the amendment of this text; and, for this purpose, he published his celebrated work, The Hexapla (or Six-fold; containing six parallel columns of different editions of the Bible). By comparing these together, he produced an improved text, known as the Hexaplarian. It would have been of the utmost interest to have preserved this work: but, from its great size (it is said to have been in fifty volumes) transcription was, in a manner, impossible. After lying for many years in the library of Ctesarea, it is believed to have perished when the Arabs took that city in the seventh century. But the amended text was preserved; and has been almost universally adopted as the text of the Septuagint, since the days of Origen.

There are two principal MSS. of the Septuagint in existence. The one, called the Alexandrian, is in the British Museum. It was sent over as a present to Charles I. by the Patriarch. of Alexandria. It is written on parchment, in four volumes; mutilated in some parts, and so old, that the ink of the letters has, in some places, eaten right through the page. It is believed to belong to the 5th or 6th century; and represents the Hexaplarian text, or the text amended by Origen. The other is called the Vatican, because it is in the library of that name in Rome. Its history is unknown, but it is thought to be rather older than the Alexandrian; and it represents the text as it existed before Origen.

There is one circumstance connected with the Septuagint that must not be passed over. It was here that first appeared the books called Apocrypha; which from it were transferred to the Vulgate, where the church of Rome decided that they are to remain. The reformers rejected them from the Canon, because they had never been in the Hebrew, and did not therefore form part of the Jewish Bible, when our Savior fixed the seal of his authority upon it.

It ought to be mentioned that the book of Daniel, as it appears in all extant editions of the Septuagint, is not the original Septuagint vetsion of Daniel. A Greek translation of this book by Theodotion was put in its place, soon after Christ, on account of its acknowledged imperfections. The proper Septuagint translation of Daniel was lost until the end of the last century, when it was discovered in the library of Cardinal Chigi at Rome. NV. H. J.

The Silent Building of Solomon's Temple

WHEN Bishop Heber read his beautiful poem, “Palestine,” in manuscript to Sir Walter Scott, his friend remarked Cult in speaking of the Temple of Solomon he had forgotten to refer to the silence which prevailed during its erection. The poet immediately retired for a few minutes and introduced the following beautiful lines:

“No workman's steel, no ponderous axes rung;

Like some tall palm, the noiseless fabric sprung.”

This very remarkable circumstance has been frequently noticed. It is regarded as an indication of the deep sense which Solomon had of the sacredness of the work; and it has given rise to many pious and useful meditations. Matthew Henry in his commentary says, “It was to be the temple of the God of peace, therefore no iron tool must be heard in it: quietness and silence both become and befriend religious exercises; God's work should be done with as much care and as little noise as may be; the temple was thrown down with axes and hammers; they that did it roared in the midst of the congregation, Psa. 74:4, 6; but it was built up in silence. Clamor and violence often hinder, but never further the work of God.” These thoughts are well worthy of consideration, especially of those who can never assert their own opinions without violently assailing those of others; nor do anything for God, without inviting the multitude to come and see their zeal for the Lord of Hosts.

The fact itself, however, has lately received a remarkable confirmation of its truth. Mr. Douglas, a Scotch gentlemen, writing to the Athenceum on the 3rd of May last, states that during a recent visit to Jerusalem he learned from a very intelligent Hebrew, that there were extensive quarries beneath the city, and that there was abundant evidence that from those quarries had been obtained the stones employed in the building and re-building of the temple. He had visited them some time before, with two Englishmen, and discovered that the quarries lead contained materials sufficient for building the walls and the city of Jerusalem. We extract the following statement: “When fairly inside, we found ourselves in an immense vault, and standing upon the top of a pile which was very evidently formed by the accumulation of the minute particles from the final dressings of the blocks of stone. On descending this pile, we entered through a large arch, into another vault, equally vast, and separated from the first by enormous pillars. This vault, or quarry, led by a gradual descent, into another and another, each separated from the other by massive stony partitions, which had been left to give additional strength to the vaulted roofs. In some of the quarries the blocks of stone which had been quarried out lay partly dressed; in some of the blocks were still attached to the rock; in some the workmen had just commenced chiseling; and in some the architect's line was distinct on the smooth face of the wall of the quarry. The mode in which the blocks were got out was similar to that used by the ancient Egyptians, as seen in the sandstone quarries at Hagar Tilsilis and in the granite quarries at Syene. The architect first drew the outline of the blocks on the face of the quarry; the workmen then chiseled them out in their whole thickness, separating them entirely from each other, and leaving them attached by their barks only to the solid wall. We spent between two and three hours in these quarries. Our examinations were, however, chiefly on the side towards the Valley of Jehoshaphat. Our guide stated that more to the westward was a quarry of the peculiar reddish marble so commonly used as pavement. in the streets of Jerusalem. From the place where we entered the descent was gradual; between some of the quarries, however, there were broad flights of steps, cut out of the solid rock. I had no means of judging of the distance between the roofs of the vaults and the streets of the city, except that from the descent the thickness must be enormous. The size and extent of these excavations fully bore out the opinion that they had yielded stones enough to build not only the Temple, but the whole of Jerusalem.

“The situation of these quarries—the mode by which the stones were got out—and the evidence that the stones were fully prepared and dressed before being removed, may possibly throw light upon the verses of Scripture in which it is said—2 Chron. 2:18— 'And he (Solomon) set threescore and ten thousand of them to be bearers of burdens, and fourscore thousand to be hewers in the mountains, and three thousand and six hundred overseers to set the people a work.' And again—1 Kings 6:7— ‘And the house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither; so that there was neither hammer nor ax nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building.'

It could scarcely have been anticipated that at a period so remote from that in which the temple was erected, any evidence should arise, thus to confirm the statement concerning the silence observed in the building; yet this testimony has come forth as it were from the dead to verify the word of truth.

Suffering in the Flesh

The will of the flesh is the practical principle of all sin. Will is not obedience to God and hence is sin in its very principle, but, being the will of the flesh, shows itself in the flesh's lusts. It does not turn towards God, but the contrary, and does turn towards what the flesh desires. It is the acting of the nature at enmity with God's. Suffering in the flesh is the opposite of this will, or acting of the nature. This is applied both to Christ and to us; but in the case of Christ it is applied to His death. (See chap. 3:18) Rather than be disobedient in anything, and perfect in obedience, from the divine surrender of all will in Psa. 40 to take the place of obedience, He goes on to death, as man's weakness, Satan's power, God's wrath, and was obedient through all these, and in the former passed through both the latter rather than not obey. He was perfect in obedience, not sparing the flesh in anything, and died to sin once; that is, He went on to death in its fullest forms, rather than withdraw from doing God's, or have one of His own. His nature died rather than He would have a will or aught but God's will. Thus sin found no inlet or place. An apple served to lead Adam into sin; nothing could lead Christ into it. Not only He had never any sin, but He went through everything that could induce will, and all failed to lead Him into it. He suffered in the flesh; sin was baffled forever, and totally—the whole proof gone through, and nothing served to introduce it; all possible trial is over, for He has gone through it in weakness, as to His human nature. He has thus rested from all further question of sin, has a divine and eternal Sabbath as to it. How blessed! On the earth He had not. He had always victory over it—never let anything but obedience in His heart—proved he had a nature contrary to it, on purpose to obey and nothing else. This was perfection, and the rather because He was tempted; but it was not a sabbath or rest. Between Him and His Father, in the exercise of love in obeying, He had joy, but till He died, οὐ πέπαυται, He had no rest from it. This has, as a great principle, its application to us. “He that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin” is an abstract principle. When the will of my flesh works, I have not ceased from sin; but when, by the power of the Holy Ghost, I act entirely and feel entirely in the new nature, and the flesh has no will allowed, nor a thought belonging to it has entrance, because I am full of what the Spirit gives me, and obey in the delight of obedience, though suffering as regards man, in that I have ceased from sin. As sin is in the flesh, it may be in us a question of degree. It is partial, temporary, perhaps, in its realization; but the principle remains ever true, and suffering, that is as far as suffering in the flesh, sin has no place in me, my thoughts, mind, and moral being. The flesh is not changed, but if I only suffer in it, it in me then has no operation as to will.

It is important that scripture truth—perfect moral truth—should be given us unmodified in its own truth and nature; because then we can see what it is, and judge the comparative degree of attainment. Besides, the spirit is refreshed by the thing itself. We have the same thing in John's epistle, who never introduces the modifications resulting from the adverse action of the flesh or any hindrance. The difficulty of the passage in Peter is its abstract nature. The point important to hold clear is that it is Christ's death that is spoken of in His case, though, of course, all His life was consistent with it.

Teetotalism

The question of sin, in one shape or another, has, from the first, agitated men's minds. It could not be otherwise. For God erects a tribunal in the conscience of all—even of the Gentiles who had not His written testimony. (Rom. 2) Philosophy gave neither solution to the problems of the intellect, nor relief to the anxieties of the heart; for as it could not rise to the Infinite Source of all good, so it did not dare to descend to the depth of the sinner's need. Evading the difficulties as long as was possible, it ended at last with denying all truth as to either. “The world by wisdom knew not God;” and where He is unknown, so is sin in its source, its nature, and its doom.

On the other hand, the family of faith have ever had a certain knowledge of God, and therefore of themselves. This gradually increased from the word of judgment on the Serpent, till the Seed came to whom the promise was made. Thus the knowledge, though true and received with a divine conviction, was necessarily partial, as indeed the revelation was, till, in these last days, God spake by His Son, the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person. In Him, especially in His death, the real character of everything was made manifest. There the badness of man, set on by Satan's craft, was met and overcome by the goodness of God. The darkness is past, and the true light now shineth. There is no veil, as there once was in Judaism. With the cross it could not co-exist, but was rent from top to bottom. And if the holy light of God displays what the sinner is in his wants and wretchedness, it cannot but display the ample provision which God has made in the blood of His own Lamb. Thus is the poor believer taught what sin is by what it has cost the Son of God; and he adores as he sees that where sin has abounded, grace did much more abound.

Hence the distance between the wisest unbeliever and the least instructed believer in their thoughts about sin. To the one, Jesus is nothing; he may admire, and ask what is truth, but, like Pilate, he goes out without waiting for an answer. To the other, Jesus is all, Jesus is truth, and he knows it to his peace and blessing. The former is satisfied with stepping into the troubled waters of Bethesda—with a reformation of man as he is. The latter sees in sin, not sickness only, but moral death, and therefore can rest nothing short of the quickening power of the Son of God. He knows that for faith is reserved the resurrection of life, the complement of the spiritual resurrection which is already enjoyed. Alas! he knows too that those who hear not the Savior's voice have not life, and cannot escape the judgment which shall be executed by and by. “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true: and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.” (1 John 5:19, 20.)

Now, the Teetotal system, however modified, will be found to offend against these fundamental truths. Having a low estimate of sin, it presents as low a remedy. Even as to the single evil with which it seeks to deal, it barely skims the surface. It does not, it cannot touch the heart within, and so it wreaks its vengeance upon the liquors without. Pharisaism washed the hands, Teetotalism washes the lips. But the same word of the Lord detects the inadequacy of both. “Hearken unto me every one of you, and understand: there is nothing from without a man that, entering into him, can defile him; but the things that come out of him, those are they that defile the man. If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.” (Mark 7:14-16.)

The entire spring of moral action, the heart, is corrupt before God. What man is, taints what he does. Hence, while the human method to cut off this and that, the divine is, first of all, to make the tree good. If that be done, good fruit is sure to follow: if not done, the more men work about it they only get more bad fruit.

It is a new life which the sinner requires as the starting point; not a step Godward can be taken previously. But it is precisely this which the Gospel proclaims at once, without money and without price. The gift, the free gift, of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. And God will own no way, no truth, no life, no Savior, but His Son. Therefore to occupy men with a teetotal pledge, is in fact to divert them at best with a quack medicine, and this, not for the root of the disease, but for a particular symptom—to divert them, I say, from the Gospel, which is as efficacious a cure in the drunkard's case as in all others. For it is the power of God unto every one that believeth.

Since the days of Cain, man has never wanted some new or revived invention wherewith to patch up his outcast condition. If Teetotalism, then, had come forward merely as a medical discovery, or even as a branch of philanthropy, it might have passed unnoticed save by those whom it concerns. But seeing that, in its grossest form, it taunts the servants of Christ with their vain efforts, and professes to outdo the Gospel: seeing that, in its least offensive shape, it claims Scriptural authority, and aspires to be the pioneer and the handmaid of the Gospel, the subject calls for a passing notice.

The Christian reads the Old Testament. He finds that wine intoxicated Noah and Lot, (Gen. 9; 19) and that it afterward afforded occasion for frequent and solemn remonstrance. (Pro. 20, 23 Isa. 5; 28, &c.) Again he finds wine brought as a natural comfort to Abraham and Isaac, (Gen. 14; 27) and often so treated, literally as well as figuratively. (Deut. 14; Psa. 104; Pro. 9, 31:6 Cant. passim, &c.) He sees in the New Testament neither contradiction nor difficulty. The Lord commenced His miracles by making water into wine (John 2), was invidiously compared with His forerunner because He abstained not (Luke 7), and made bread and wine (which John the Baptist never used) to be the chosen, constant memorial of His dying love till He come again, the symbol also of our communion with each other. Finally, the Holy Ghost more than once dwells on the end of the drunkard (1 Cor. 6; Gal. 5), corrects the unhallowed license of the Corinthian church at the Lord's Supper (1 Cor. 11), and warns believers, especially such as were prominent, against excess in daily life. (Rom. 13; Eph. 5; 1 Tim. 3; Titus 2 Peter 4) At the same time, He takes pains (1 Tim. 5:23) to remove the scrupulousness of a devoted young servant of Christ, and enjoins the use of a little wine, rather than water, for his stomach's sake and often infirmities. So graciously does God deign to interest Himself even in the bodily weakness and wants of those who love him! The conclusion is irresistible. Total abstinence, as a general rule, has not, nor ever had, divine sanction. It is a device at issue with the plain facts and doctrine of Scripture; and this as to Christians no less than as to Jews. In the Old Testament yayin, and the New Testament οῖος that is, the ordinary words for “wine” in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures—are used both in a good and in a bad connection; because the moral evil lay not in the thing itself, nor in its use, but in its abuse. There were different kinds of wine then (Neh. 5:18), as there are now. But not a single text intimates a particular sort of yayin, which could not inebriate. Nay, more; what Scripture does say disprove the fancy, as the sequel abundantly shows. Thus, Num. 6:3 plainly marks off yayin, as. fermented grape-juice, and that in the vinous as distinguished from the acetous stage; excluding other fermented drinks, vinegar; unfermented grape-liquors, as well as the solid fruit of the vine. We who adhere to the regular sense of the word are not bound to produce specific proofs; we are entitled to take it in the same sense everywhere, unless positive cause be shown to the contrary. But those who affirm that in certain places the word has a different Meaning are, in each instance, bound to give Scriptural reasons adequate to produce conviction. This they never can do. We deny their affirmation: upon them falls the burden of proof.

Not to anticipate, however, the Temperance Reformers may be divided in twain. One party consider that alcoholic liquors are essentially poisonous, and therefore evil as a beverage; that in Scripture times there were two distinct genera of wine, &c.—the one unfermented and a blessing, the other fermented and a curse. But the moderate own that the use of alcohol is not in itself sinful; that inspired men, and even Christ himself, did not abstain; that the habitual use of fermented beverages may be sanctioned by the Bible: still they plead that, though lawful, it is not expedient. It is plain that the latter system destroys the former. Among themselves the difference is keenly felt, if we may judge by the unusual acrimony of their recriminations. The partisans of expediency pronounce the doctrine of the ultra-teetotalers to be “preposterous and pestiferous lucubrations,” “mischievous error,” and “modern delusion,” and hear in return that, in its present shape, their theory is “an absurd and blasphemous abomination, and the sooner it is universally scouted and scorned, the better” — “a fraud and a counterfeit of the worst description.” Since this is their spirit to each other, he who is forced to condemn them both can expect little courtesy from either.

Let us, however, examine their arguments; and, first, of those who advocate “thorough and consistent teetotalism.”

The words for wine, say they, “must have been, at first, necessarily applied and restricted to, fresh unfermented juices. The primitive process of wine-pressing is well expressed in Gen. 40:11; and also by Milton,” &c. Now, every Scripturian must know that this statement is not only without Bible evidence, but contradicted by it. Noah “drank of the wine and was drunken.” This is the first recorded application of the word “wine.” Is it restricted to fresh unfermented juice? Or does it not necessarily mean the fermented liquor of the grape? This case was long before the dream of Pharoah's butler, even if the process described there had been called wine-pressing in the chapter, which it is not. Nor are the reveries of “Paradise Lost” as to Eve of weight on such a question.

We are referred to Lev. 10, “where Teetotalism is proclaimed as the Eternal's remedy for intemperance.” But, in the first places the restriction applies to Aaron and his sons. Secondly, it was in force only when they went into the tabernacle. Is this to proclaim Teetotalism? Does it not rather imply the ordinary liberty of the priests to use what on a special occasion was forbid den? Another writer reminds us that under the New Testament all believers are priests. Does he forget that if Aaron's sons are to be spiritually interpreted, so is the type of wine and strong drink? Thus natural joy and excitement seem to be shadowed under these drinks, as the uncovering of the head and rending of the garments were the symptoms of natural sorrow. Neither becomes those who enjoy nearness to God. His presence was meant to silence both. Whether, therefore, we look at the type or the antitype, Lev. 10 does not proclaim Teetotalism.

Next, we are told of “the establishment of the first Teetotal Society among the Holy Nazarites.” Now, not only is their case a peculiar one like the priests, but there are points essential to the Nazarite which differ alike from the theory and the practice of the Teetotal Society. His separation consisted in three grand heads; he was to eat or drink nothing that came from the vine, to let his hair grow, and to come at no dead body. None of these things is put forth as a moral principle more than another. The whole was a carnal ordinance imposed until the time of reformation. To drink wine was defiling to the Nazarite, but it was equally so to cut the hair. Christianity is subject to no part of the ordinance as such, though we may well profit by the truths which it figures. Moreover, when the days of his separation were fulfilled, God ordained that the Nazarite should shave his head and might drink wine. (Num. 6:13-20.) Does God ordain what is wrong? The Nazarite was then free to drink the very wine which before had been forbidden. Does this permission really square with Teetotalism? Lastly, what has the principle of a separation from all vine-, produce, in common with the Teetotal pledge? The Nazarite was forbidden the unfermented as well as the fermented, the solid no less than the liquid. Does this accord with the reasoning of “Tirosh lo yayin,” or of any other accredited work of Teetotalers? If not one entire verse of Num. 6 can be honestly interpreted in favor of their society, why cite the Nazarite ritual as their precursor? And how do they seek to escape from the net in which they have Entangled their own feet? They are forced to allow that from everything pertaining to the vine the Nazarites equally abstained; but, with self-complacent skepticism, they add, that we, with our better chemical knowledge, of course do not! Can Christians tamely listen to such contempt of God's word! The folly, too, of these speeches is only less gross than the sin; for what had a Nazarite to do with chemistry? It is enough to remark on the message of the angel of the Lord to the mothers of Samson and of John the Baptist, that theirs was an extraordinary Nazariteship.” Again, the Rechabites obeyed in neither building nor sowing, quite as much as in drinking no wine. Their case, if applicable at all, would prove far too much. If it proved that men ought to drink no wine, it would prove that they ought to build no houses. (Jer. 35) So Daniel and his friends abstained from the king's meat as well as his nine. If they drank water, they ate pulse. It was a question of Jewish cleanness, not of morality. Accordingly, Dan. 10:3 clearly implies that, save in special circumstances, as fasting, the prophet did eat flesh and drink wine. The cup offered to the Lord upon the cross, and refused, did not consist of wine merely, and therefore does not bear on the present question. The case of Timothy, as we have seen, proves the reverse of what it is cited to prove.

The reader has before him the Scriptural argument of the extreme party. Let him judge whether the case of the moderate section is not as decided a failure. They appeal to Rom. 14:21 and 1 Cor. 8:13. The question is: does the scope of these texts coincide with that of a Teetotal Society? Is a drunkard the “weak brother” for whose sake the Christian is to forbear using his liberty?

The simple reading of 1 Cor. 8 shows that nothing is farther from the mind of the Spirit. The question here is one “touching things offered unto idols.” The Teetotal question has nothing to do with such offerings. That is, the essential features of the Corinthian difficulty do not exist in the cause of Temperance. Rom. 14 (though it mentions wine, which 1 Cor. 8. does not) is as little to the purpose. At Rome the dispute grew not out of Gentile idolatry, but out of the religious scruples of the Jewish, converts, who, on certain days, would not partake of meats and drinks. Thus have we seen Daniel abstain from his customary food for three whole weeks, and every Jew similarly testified the affliction of his soul on the Day of Atonement. But it is preposterous to apply such a principle to a Temperance Society. Some Gentiles in these days may refrain from fermented liquors; others may adopt a vegetable diet. Is the Christian to be tossed to and fro at the whim of a world which perverts everything? Is he to refuse anything which God has created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth? Lastly, the way in which “the weak brother” is treated is as revolting as untrue. 1 Cor. 5 proves beyond cavil that a drunkard is a wicked person to be put away from the Church, not a weak brother to be home with. But Rom. 14 describes a class as different as possible—not false professors of lax, unholy walk, but real Christians who had feebly realized their deliverance from all questions about things legally clean or unclean. Therefore they retained a conscience in bondage to days, meats, and drinks. Where is the analogy between the Roman and Corinthian cases, and a Teetotal Society? There is none. But if so, it is clear that their argument from Rom. 14 and 1 Cor. 8 totally perishes.

The Ten Virgins

III. Matt. 25:1-11. E. J. H. asks, whether the virgins, in Matt. 25 went to meet the bridegroom on his way to the bride's dwelling, or whether they met him on his return home with the bride He inclines to the latter view, especially as the Syriac, Arabic, and Vulgate add “and the bride” to the close of verse 1, which at least indicates the custom that prevailed when these versions were made, even if the addition were unwarranted. Are the virgins of the parable identical with the 144,000 of Rev. 14, “for they are virgins,” and with those addressed in Rev. 19:9, as “blessed are they which are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb?” If the oil symbolizes the unction of the Holy Spirit, could the foolish virgins have had any in their lamps, as some suppose? Does verse 7 imply more than that they too lit or relit their lamps, which showed light for a certain time, because the wick would burn, but being unsupplied with oil it soon burnt out?

Though the Arabic is erroneously included, the external evidence is a good deal stronger than E. J. H. supposes. The famous Codex Bezce Cantab. (D) with eight cursive manuscripts, the Peschito and Philoxenian Syriac, the Itala, the Vulgate, the Persian, the Armenian, the Francic and the Saxon versions, with three or four fathers, add “and the bride.” Notwithstanding, the vast mass of the best MSS. is adverse, (including the uncials, technically known as B, C, E, F, G, H, K, L, M, S, U, V. X, Δ) not to speak of the Coptic and Selavonic versions, &c. The internal evidence is so decidedly opposed to the words as to leave no doubt that the usual text is correct, and the addition a mere but not unnatural gloss. This, understood by some, was expressed by others, and thus it probably crept into a few manuscripts and many versions. As to the sense, it seems plain that the Bridegroom is represented as coming to the borne of His bride. Not, however, she, but the marriage retinue is the object of the Spirit here. “Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins.” It is a general picture of the finally contrasted portion of “the wise” and “foolish,” who bore the name of Christ during His absence, embracing the state of things from the first expectation of the Bridegroom, till His return. “Then” seems to refer to Matt. 24:50, 51, and shows that, when the Lord comes in judgment, the lot of many will be decided, who might look very well at first going out with the truehearted saints to meet the Bridegroom, and who afterward (when slumber overspread all, even the wise), might look no worse. But when the “day” and the “hour” arrive, how vain to have taken the lamps of profession without the oil, the Holy Spirit, who alone can sustain in testimony and in waiting for Christ! That the foolish “took No oil with them” is distinct and conclusive as to the last question.

It may be remarked that the parable partakes of that historical character which attaches to the likenesses of the kingdom of heaven, differing as to this from the parables of the household servants and of the talents, which precede and follow it. They are individual in their scope; whereas in the virgins we have a representation of the government of the heavens as a whole, with a special view to the closing scene, to which the opening word “then” seems to call attention.

We ought not to identify the virgins here with those in Rev. 14. In the last the remnant so described owe it to their purity (verse 4) in contrast with the mass who defiled themselves with Babylon, that great city, which made all nations drink the wine of the wrath of her fornication. (Verse 8.) Here the figure of virgins, equally applied to the foolish and the wise, is simply taken from the familiar circumstances of a nuptial train in the East. There might at first sight seem to be more affinity with the guests at the marriage-supper of the Lamb in Rev. 19:9. But there is essential difference, that in Matthew the scene is on earth, (the bride not being named, as being outside the mind of the Lord there,) while in Revelation it is a heavenly scene, and the bride is the prominent figure next to the Lamb, though we find that there are others blessed at the same time, who are distinct from her. In Matt. 25, whether we receive or reject “and the bride,” it is clear that Christians are set forth, not by the bride, but by the virgins, who leave all and go out to meet the Bridegroom, Christ rejected, but returning from heaven. This calling was long forgotten during His delay. Those who had gone out, according to this position, but who had actually got back into ease in the world, are again awakened by the cry of His speedy advent, which is raised at “midnight.” Separation practically takes place in due time, according to the real possession or the absence of the Spirit. For the Lord lingers long enough, after the cry which aroused all, to put this to the test.

What Saints Will Be in the Tribulation?

The question, Will the saints be in the tribulation? suggests itself to every one who is occupied with the hopes of the Church of God and the prophetic declarations of scripture as to the close of this earth's painful and laborious history. Personal anxiety suggests it on one hand, and on the other it connects itself intimately with the gravest and most vital points of prophetic inquiry (or rather, of the true character of the Church of God and its condition at the close). I cannot, in the space allowed me here, enter at large into the declarations of the Old Testament as to a remnant, nor of the New as to the Church. But a short answer to the question itself will help to throw light on the points I allude to, and on the rapture of the saints. I purpose adding a development of the true force of 2 Thess. 1; 2, so often introduced in the discussions which have arisen on these subjects.

And first, as to our being in the tribulation. How do I know there will be a tribulation? I must get some revelation of it. He who would place the Church in it will answer me, I am sure. The scriptures are clear on the point. There will be at the close a tribulation, a time such as there has never been, till the Lord's coming brings deliverance. What, then, are the scriptures which tell us that there will be such tribulation: I am not aware of any other direct ones than these? Jer. 30:7; Dan. 12:1; Matt. 24:21; Mark 13:19 (St. Luke does not speak of it, nor of the abomination of desolation); to which we may add the more general passages of Rev. 3:10; 7:14. The first four passages do effectively prove that there will be a time of tribulation such as never was since there was a nation, (or, as it is expressed in Mark, “as was not from the beginning of the creation which God created, neither shall be”). The passages from Revelation apply, we shall see, to a wider sphere than the preceding ones; but as they speak of a great tribulation, I have, of course, quoted them. There will be then a tribulation.

The other part of the question still remains. Shall we, who compose the Church, be in this tribulation?

The answer to this question must be sought in the passages which speak of the tribulation itself. The first of them, Jer. 30:7, is as clear as possible in announcing those to whom it applies. “It is the time of Jacob's trouble, but he shall be delivered out of it.”

This time, then, of trouble, such as never was nor will be—so that there cannot be two—is the time of Jacob's trouble. Nothing can be clearer or more distinct. The whole chapter may be read, which sets it in the clearest light. It is not merely that Jacob will be found there, but when it is said, “Alas, for that day is great, there is none like it,” the trouble spoken of is Jacob's trouble. The next is Dan. 12:1. This is also positively declared to be of Daniel's people. The whole prophecy is the description of what is to happen to Daniel's people in the last days. (Dan. 10:14.) Michael, also (compare. 10:21), will then stand up for that people, and, as Jeremiah had said, they will be delivered, that is, the elect remnant—those written in the book. Daniel's testimony then is also quite clear. The tribulation is the tribulation of Daniel's people. But this is the rather important because it carries at once to Matthew, the Lord Himself declaring that He speaks of this same time and same event, using the terms of Daniel and referring to him by name as well as to the statements of the passage. (Compare Matt. 24:15; Dan. 12:11.) But all the language of the passage in Matthew confirms this. Those who are in Judea are to flee to the mountains. Those who are on the housetop are not to come down to seek anything. The abomination which causes desolation stands in the holy place. 'They are to pray that their flight may not be on the sabbath. False Christs and false prophets are to seduce with the hopes cherished by the Jewish people. All is local and Jewish—has no application to hones which rest on going to meet Christ in the air. What is in question is “flesh” being “saved” (i.e., life spared on earth). Mark relates evidently to the same event and almost exactly in the same terms. Thus these four passages, which speak of the unequaled tribulation, apply it distinctively to Jacob, Jerusalem, Judea, and the Jews, not to the Church. It is entirely another order and sphere of things from the Church, and professedly so.

There are two passages which, as I have said, are more general: Rev. 3:10 and 7:14. Do these, then, apply to the Church? The language of Rev. 3:10 is thus— “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them which dwell on the earth.” That is, when the Church is addressed, it is with a declaration that she will be kept from that hour which shall come to try others.

So that thus far the testimonies of scripture declare that the unequaled tribulation is for Jacob, and that when the time of temptation is spoken of in addressing the Church, it is to declare that the faithful shall be kept out of it. Rev. 7:14 may seem more difficult; still it bears witness to the same truth, for the heavenly kings and priests (that is the elders who have represented them from the beginning of the second or strictly prophetic part of the book) are professedly another class of persons, who have not come out of the great tribulation. One of these elders explains to John who these that have come out of great tribulation are, as another class of persons from themselves. One of them asks John who are these that are arrayed in white robes, &c. John refers to him, and then he explains. That is, the crowned elders are quite a different class from them; so that while admitting the passage to be obscure in certain points, it is clear in this—in giving us the elders and those who came out of the tribulation as two distinct classes. The crowned elders are not at all represented as having been in it, but as pointing out others as having come out of it. Every element of the description of these persons confirms this distinction.

Another passage, while not using the term tribulation, yet speaking of the epoch at which it is to happen, confirms this same truth. When Satan and his angels are defeated by Michael, he is cast out and comes down to the earth, having great wrath, knowing he has but a short time, and persecutes the woman. Now, what is the effect of this most important event on those who can celebrate its bearing? That the trial of the heavenly saints is ended, and that of the inhabiters of the earth and the sea just about to begin in its most formidable shape because Satan is cast down there, The language is this— “Now is come salvation and strength, and the kingdom of our God and the power of His Christ, for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused before our God day and night, and they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives unto the death. Therefore, rejoice ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them; woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea,” &c. Now I do not say that this is the moment of the rapture, for I think that is included in the man-child's being caught up. But I say this, that at the moment of the commencement of the great rage of Satan for the three times and a half, the entire deliverance of the heavenly saints from his power and their definite triumph is celebrated, that is, they are not exposed to that last time of Satan's rage. This chapter, then, confirms, in the fullest way, the exemption of the Church from the last and dreadful time of trial. I am satisfied that the whole teaching and structure of the Revelation confirms the same truth; but this would evidently lead me into too large a sphere of inquiry. We have found that the passages which speak of tribulation first apply it directly to the Jews on one side, and then exclude the Church from it on the other. I do not see how such a point as this could be made clearer by scripture.

I now turn to the interpretation of 2 Thess. 1, 2. There is in the latter chapter an (I think I may say) acknowledged mistranslation, of which the true and undoubted sense gives the key to the whole passage.

I refer to verse 2, “as that the day of Christ were at hand.” It should be were present. The word is used for and translated in two different places, “present,” in contrast with things to come— “things present and things to come.” It is always its sense in scripture. What the Thessalonians were then troubled and upset in their minds by, was that they had been led by false teachers, pretending to the Spirit, and even alleging letters of Paul to this effect, to suppose that the day of Christ was actually come. The violence of persecution was very great; and as the day of the Lord is in effect spoken of as a day of terror and trial in the Old Testament, these false teachers had profited by this to persuade them it was there. The apostle with divine wisdom sets them morally right in the first chapter, as to their feelings and sentiments as to this, before entering in the second into positive instruction as to the facts of the Lord's coming. He shows them the folly, (since Christ was to appear for that day, He Himself being present in it), of supposing that it was His own people and faithful ones He was going to make suffer and cast into distress and tribulation. No; it was His enemies and theirs who would be in affliction in that day, and they themselves in rest and peace. The very righteousness of God would assure this. It was a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that troubled them, and to His troubled ones rest, when Christ should be revealed, for this was what brought in the day. It was only shown by their tribulations that He counted them worthy of His kingdom that was then to come. In a word, as the day was Christ's, and brought in by His personal presence, when it was there they would have rest and their persecutors trouble. It is the contrast of state when the day is there, not the epoch of its commencement, which is spoken of. Indeed, had it been so, it would have been a poor and uninspired comfort, for they would not have rest yet. On the other hand, the adversaries of the constant expectation of Christ would gain nothing; for the apostle's words so interpreted would have led the saints at Thessalonica to a constant expectation of His appearing, instead of their rapture, as the moment of getting rest. But the truth is the using ἄνεσις (rest) as significative of the moment of attaining the rest is a mistake. The word, though used for the time of obtaining relaxation, is equally used for a state of ease, or even pleasure. It is never used in scripture for the moment of obtaining relaxation from trial, but always in the general sense of a state of ease, one contrasted with θλίψις (distress). The whole and sole force of the apostle's reasoning is this, that as the Lord Himself was to bring in the day, it could not, when there, be a day of distress for His people, but evidently for His enemies and their persecutors. In the second chapter he proceeds to unfold to them the real order of the events, and especially in connection with the place they had in them.

Here, again, we meet a question of criticism, but it affects very little the reasoning of the apostle. Some would change here the authorized English version, and read “But I beseech you, brethren, concerning the coming,” &c., instead of “by the coming.” The preposition itself is used in both ways; but its constant force with words of beseeching is 'by,' sometimes ‘for,' which has no place here. The force of the apostle's reasoning is this, that as they were to be gathered together to Christ, they could not be in the day which was to come by His appearing; they were to go to meet Him in the air, and hence could not be in the judgments of that day, its trials or its terrors.

The apostle had taught them in his first epistle that they were to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air; hence he could refer to it as a known truth. The saints were not to await the coming of the day of the Lord on the earth, but to go up to meet Him in the air, and be forever with Him. Did He appear, they, we know, would appear with Him. But here he speaks of what they ought to have remembered that they would go up before the day, and hence they could not possibly be there in their actual state on earth, if the day was. The Church's connection with the return of the Lord was to go up to meet Him in the air, to be gathered unto Him. The day was entirely another thing; it was vengeance from His presence. Neither could the day therefore come before the objects of vengeance were there. An apostasy would come, and the man of sin would be revealed, whom the Lord would consume with the breath of His mouth, and destroy by the appearing of His presence. That is, we have two things, (which from other scriptures also we know to be distinct, exactly in this way, Christ's coming and the manifestation of it; for when He appears we shall appear with Him; hence we must be with Him before even He appears at all, yet at His coming,) the coming of Christ and the public epiphany of His presence, with one of which the saints are directly connected, by being gathered together to Him; with the other, the day, because at His appearing He will execute judgment against the ungodly. They will be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power. But He will come to be glorified in His saints, and admired in all them that believed, that is they will be in the display of this glory in that day. They will appear with Him in glory—be like Him. Now it is quite certain they will not appear with Him when they are caught up to meet Him in the air. Thus it is not merely particular expressions, though these are clear and forcible, but the bearing, and object, and course of reasoning of the whole chapter, which shows the distinction of the rapture of the saints before Christ appears, and the coming of the day when He is admired in them.

What is important to remark is the entire difference of relationship in which the saints are put with Christ—we belong to Him, go to meet Him, appear with Him, are glorified together. The practical result is not merely to clear up a question of dates and of time, but to change the whole spirit and character of our waiting and Christ's coming. We wait for Him to come and take us to Himself, the full realization of our heavenly calling. There are no events connected with our relationship with Christ. We have no need of judgment to participate in blessing under Him, we go out of the midst of all events to meet Him above. The Jews and the world are delivered by judgments; hence they must await the course of events and the full ripening of earthly evil for judgment, for the day will not come before. Hence, we find in the Psalms the appeal for judgment and the times of it, the declaration of the overwhelming character of evil, and the cry to God to show Himself and render a reward to the proud. The Church on earth has no need to seek this; she belongs to Christ, and will be caught up to heaven out of the evil.

I add a few words on another passage suggested to me, as one by which difficulties have been created in some minds, really desirous of the truth—I mean the connection of the fourth and fifth of 1 Thess. 1 Confess it does not affect my own mind in any way, but as it does those of others, it is well to notice it. The difficulty, if there be any, arises from a serious confusion in the minds of those who make it—the very confusion into which the Thessalonians were led—namely, taking tribulation for the day of Christ. For the day of Christ, Christ must appear. Let us only keep this clear in our minds and all these difficulties vanish. The Thessalonians looked so earnestly for Christ's coming, with no further knowledge of the manner or order of it, that they thought believers who had died, and perhaps died even for Christ, would not be there to meet Him. This mistake the apostle corrects. He tells them that they must not grieve as those without hope, that they would not be left out of the cortege of glory, that Christ would bring them with Him. He then explains to them the manner, and shows that it was by their resurrection, which would take place before even the then living ones are changed; and when this was also wrought by divine power, all would go up to meet Him in the air, and so they would be forever with the Lord. This parenthetically explains, by express revelation, the manner they will go up to meet Him—subsequently, as we have seen from Colossians, appear with Him when He appears. The parenthetical part merely gives the association of Christ Himself, which is our proper portion. But he had said, as the general truth, in answer to their fears, that God would bring them with Christ. This leads him naturally to the general subject. He had no need to speak of times and seasons. The Thessalonians knew perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night, and when they (the world) say peace and safety, sudden destruction would come upon them, as travail upon a woman with child. He adds, “but, brethren, ye are not in darkness that that day should overtake you as a thief: ye are all children of the day.” It is alleged that the apostle could not have said that the day would not overtake them as a thief, if they were not to feel liable to be in some sort overtaken by it. Now, if the teaching of the apostle be examined, even in this place, there is no possible ground for this; for the day of the Lord Christ must appear; but he had just taught them that they were to be caught up to meet Him in the air and be brought with Him. That is, he had taught them what made it impossible to suggest that the day could overtake them in any way or manner whatever. They were the day, so to speak (as he indeed says, “ye are the children of the day,” “let us who are of the day).” This passage says nothing of not being in the tribulation—we have treated that point already; but the objection confounds the tribulation and the day which really closes it. The tribulation is Satan's power (though God's judgment in woe), the day Christ's, which makes it and binds him. But the passage speaks not at all of the tribulation, though it supposes nothing of the kind, but it does speak of the day of the Lord, and with instruction as to the portion of the saints which show that that can have in no way whatever to do with them. They are of it and to come in its power. All it says is, the day will overtake them as a thief in the night but it will not overtake you, for you are of the day. It says nothing of times and seasons, but negatives the application of the well-known truth to them.

Types of Scripture: 1. Historical Glance and General Principles

Every intelligent Christian will allow that the subject of types is of deep interest and importance. Notoriously, however, many shrink from it as if it were forbidden dangerous ground, shrouded in perpetual fog, through which at intervals some gleams of sunshine pierce with difficulty. Not that this tract of Scriptural study is not rich and varied and attractive. No line of things in the Bible abounds more in living instruction, in appeals to conscience, in comfort to the heart, in confirmation of faith so much the stronger in the end because indirect in appearance. All one's old knowledge of that blessed book abides, as far as it was real; but, with a true insight into the types, comes a fresh and super-added light, which attaches the affections and the mind with immensely increased tenacity to the word of God. Not merely is it sweet to ponder over the scenes, the beings, the circumstances of the past, and the ways of God displayed in them; all this is enhanced when their typical aspect is laid hold of. Like the bread which multiplied under the hands and word of Christ; whence, after the thousands had fed, more is left to be carefully gathered up at the end, than existed at the beginning when none had eaten. If then the types had been commonly neglected, it is because they have been ill understood.

To this neglect the Greek fathers, and even the graver Latins have largely contributed; not intentionally of course, but through their lack of spirituality and sound judgment. Under their labors, if we may judge from their remains in many and ponderous folios, the field produced a crop, large perhaps, but mingled with baneful and unsightly weeds. Scarcely less luxuriant and capricious in their fancies, though far more redolent of Christ, were the divines of the seventeenth century, such as Cocceius and Witsius abroad, or Mather and Keach at home. For instance, if we select from the writings of Augustine, the greatest light of patristic antiquity, we have in his work on the gospel of John (Tract. 24 cap. 6:5) the following typical view of the miraculous loaves. The five loaves are taken as the five books of Moses—not wheaten, but of barley, because they pertain to the Old Testament. As is barley, so is the letter of that Testament, with a rough and tenacious integument, but the marrow within. The lad that carried them and the two fishes, is conjectured to be Israel, bearing their burden with childish feeling, but not eating. The fishes are supposed to set forth the two anointed offices of Priest and King. This is certainly a match in extravagance, if not in the quantity of minute resemblances, to Guild, who, according to Dr. Fairbairn, reckons up no fewer than forty-nine typical links between Joseph and Christ, and seventeen between Jacob and Christ. Now while we assuredly gather that Joseph is, for reasons which may appear another time, an eminent figure of the Lord, we agree with our author that such, superficial analogies as these writers make much off are unworthy to be considered as types. “Thus Jacob's being a supplanter of his brother is made to represent Christ's supplanting death, sin, and Satan; his being obedient to his parents in all things, Christ's subjection to his heavenly Father and his earthly parents; his purchasing his birthright by red pottage, and obtaining the blessing by presenting savory venison to his father, clothed Esau's Garment Christ's purchasing the heavenly inheritance for us by his red blood, and obtaining the blessing by offering up the savory meat of his obedience, in the borrowed garment of our nature,” &c., (vol. 1 p. 30).

From those who in ancient or in modern times had thus slipped out of the place of safe and humble inquiry into that of hasty guess-work, the reaction was too easy into the cold rationalistic theology of the eighteenth century, which blighted, almost indiscriminately, “the precious” and “the vile” of their predecessors. Indeed, it was not the typical portions of Scripture merely which then suffered an eclipse. Christ Himself was most indistinctly, if at all, seen as the sun of the Bible system; and, very naturally, that which prefigured him and his work sank in like proportion. Hence it has almost come to be an axiom among the popular guides of the day, “that just so much of the Old Testament is to be accounted typical as the New Testament affirms to be so, and no more” (Prof. M. Stuart). “By what means,” says Bishop March, “shall we determine, in any given instance, that what is alleged as a type was really designed for a type? The only possible source of information on this subject is Scripture itself. The only possible means of knowing that two distant, though similar, historical facts were so connected in the general scheme of divine providence, that the one was designed to prefigure the other, is the authority of that book, in which the scheme of divine Providence is unfolded.” So too Mr. H. Home and many more. A principle narrower or more arbitrary can hardly be conceived. For it demands no profound research, nothing more than a careful reading of the New Testament, to observe that the way in which it mentions some Old Testament personages or events in no wise excludes others from a typical relation. Rather does it give us samples, some plain, and others more obscure. Far from discouraging, the New Testament stimulates the fullest and minutest investigation of the Old, the Holy Ghost using both as the perfect source and standard of revealed truth.

If it were merely meant that we must not, in our inference from a given type, overstep the teaching of dogmatic Scripture, none could object. If we were thereby exhorted to caution, where no express warrant labels the type, the counsel would be valuable. But it is plain, if one read Genesis without bias, that Adam and Eve have no marks there which so unequivocally distinguish them from Cain and Abel, that the former pair, and not the latter, had a typical design. One of the rigid school answers that Paul decides the question as to Adam in Rom. 5, and another ventures to think that he is nearly as plain about Eve in Eph. 5. Not at all, cries the voice of Mr. Lord across the Atlantic, the word τίπος only means a similitude,'“ not type properly, in Rom. 5, and nothing of the sort is said in Eph. 5. Thus the direct tendency of this demand for chapter and verse in the New Testament touching the Old is to limit us to a minimum of typical instruction, if not to rob us of it altogether.

The fact is, that Scripture differs from mere books of information and science, inasmuch as these are wholly irrespective of moral condition and may be mastered alike by the evil and the good, while that depends on our measure of subjection to the Spirit of God. And as the children of God are not equally spiritual, so they differ in the degree of their understanding of and relish for all that is of God. If all Christians had a single eye, every one would be full of light. But this is not so. Each has to contend with influences, prejudices, prepossessions, &c., which, as far as they work, obscure the judgment, and thus lead to differing views and practice. Hence it is that the evidence of the word which is irresistible to one is weak or null to another, rightly or wrongly, of course, as a man is led by the Spirit. To take the same example as before, a man better taught than Bishop Marsh would see ground, in Jude 11 and Heb. 12:24, for interpreting Cain and Abel typically. And if they are to be so taken, why not Lainech and Seth, of whom serious and interesting facts are recorded in the same chapter? Again, the hardest exactor of express New Testament authority can scarcely deny a formally typical force to the deluge. (see 1 Peter 3) Has then the subsequent altar which Noah built no future bearing? Nor God's blessing of him and his sons, with His solemn committal of the sword of government and the covenant with the earth and all flesh? And the city and tower in the plain of Shinar, has it no language for our ears—that Babel, where language was confounded by the judgment of Jehovah, and the various tongues of men began? If Sarah and Hagar, if Isaac and Ishmael have the explicit sanction of Scripture, is it not implied as to Abraham and Lot? If Melchizedek cannot be disputed, what are we to infer about the combinations of the Kings and their conflicts, what about the intervention of the head of promise and the deliverance of his earthly-minded kinsman? Are all these great connected circumstances unmeaning, save as moral and historical? Is “the possessor of heaven and earth” an immaterial title there and then, because, “the most high God” merely is cited in Heb. 7.

In short, there might be reason in thus confining our investigation to those portions of the Old Testament which are employed unambiguously as figures in the New, if the New Testament either professed to be, or in reality was, an exposition of all the parts of the Old. But all must confess that this is not the case; which it ought to be, if types are to be sought nowhere in the Bible beyond the very limited horizon which is formed by the direct notices and explanations of the latest revelation. On the contrary, we have here either passing allusions, or large principles laid down, because God addresses his family as having an unction from the Holy One, and knowing all things. “I have not written unto you,” says John, “because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth... These things have I written unto you concerning them that seduce you. But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.” Again, the Holy Ghost says by Paul (and this just after glancing rapidly over a number of typical transactions in the history of Israel)— “I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say.” That is, the New Testament pointedly addresses itself not to the ignorance of Christian men, but to their capacity to use the word of God aright in virtue of the Holy Ghost dwelling in them. This is so much the more remarkable as being said to the Corinthians, whom the same epistle had characterized as babes in Christ. “I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able. Nevertheless,” says the Apostle, “I would not have you ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea,” followed by the statement that these things were our examples (literally, types, figures of us).

Now, is it possible for an unprejudiced man to read this last passage, and to gather from it that the Holy Ghost is laying down a systematic summary of all that was typical in the journeyings of Israel? Is it not rather true that we have simply an application here, as elsewhere, of so much as naturally bore on the question in hand, the danger of idolatry, &c., and of being content with ordinances without life? So, afterward, there is a striking use made of the fact, that Israel after the flesh ate of the sacrifices, and were partakers of the altar; as, in the preceding chapter, direct reference is made to the law of Moses. “Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes no doubt, this is written that he that ploweth should plow in hope, and that he that thresheth should be partaker of his hope.” Spiritual husbandry was the grand idea in the mind of the revealing Spirit. Further on, in the same chapter, the Apostle applies the special provision which God enjoined in behalf of the priests and all the tribe of Levi; that, as they had no part nor inheritance with Israel, they should eat the offerings of the Lord, and his inheritance. Evidently, therefore, while there is nothing like or pretending to be, a catalog raisonnie of Old Testament figures, they are profusely used, in addressing believers (not Hebrews merely, but Gentiles also); and as clearly those used are cited not in the least degree as exceptional Cases, but rather as specimens of a vast class which pervades the Bible.

Is it then seriously contended that the brief direction respecting the ox in Deut. 25:4 is picked out by the Apostle as the sole word in the chapter which has special application to Christians? Of course that was what the Spirit wanted in 1 Cor. 9, and what the saints who are exhorted needed to weigh. But if the occasion had demanded it, was there not typical instruction of the deepest moment in the same context? In the first verses, it is as to a brother, even if in the wrong, and justly to be punished; in the last verses it is touching the sworn enemies of the Lord and his people. Forbearance towards Amalek would be indifference to the honor of the one, and the wrongs of the other. The judge must see the faulty Israelites beaten according to his misdeeds, but with a fixed limit, lest “thy brother should seem vile to thee.” We are satisfied, also, that the central details of the chapter are equally written under the same prescient eye: the ordinance for perpetuating each family name in Israel; and the keeping up, under severe penalty, of purity and delicacy of feeling, even where those nearest to us are menaced or suffering; and the maintenance of the most thorough integrity in all dealings, small and great, in the sight and blessing of the Lord.

Take, again, the provision for the Levites in Num. 18, &c., alluded to in 1 Cor. 9:13. Is that to be dislocated from its connection, and to be regarded as the only food for the servants of the Lord found there? Is the priestly rod of Aaron, once dead, but now alive again for evermore, without fruit for us? Is its sole use as a token against the rebellious children of Israel? As to the red heifer in Num. 19, we presume that the most clamorous demand for apostolic endorsement must bow to Heb. 9:13. It was as appropriate in itself as in the circumstances and season where it occurs—the type of Christ sacrificed and brought home, by the Spirit of God, to the individual saints in the wilderness, where an unintentional defilement is contracted by contact with the things of death: in a word, the shadow of God's gracious way of restoring communion with himself, when interrupted in our wanderings here below. It is not redemption which is in question here, but priestly grace and the remembrance, in the Spirit, of Christ's suffering to meet those unwilling soils which might be too lightly slurred over in the desert. And is it conceivable that grave men should think the scene of Meribah (Num. 20) to be a mere historical fact? They are compelled to allow more in the serpent of brass in the following chapter, because of the Lord's word to Nicodemus in John 3. Is the land which lies between given up to bareness? Or is it only fallow ground, because men have been slow to take and till it in the name of the Lord? Strange indeed would it be, that God should have written his word as those deem who acknowledge that Num. 18 and 20 are eminently typical, but strip withal the intervening portion of all such claim, in the face of a narrative at least as full and as striking!

So in 1 Cor. 10:1-10 a few leading facts are alluded to as having befallen the Israelites, and chiefly recorded in Exodus and Numbers: the passage through the Red Sea under Moses, the manna, the water from the rock, on God's part; the lust, idolatry, tempting Christ, and murmuring, on theirs. Are we then to exercise no spiritual judgment respecting the other displays of God and man, no less solemn and profitable? Are we not to inquire how they too bear on the future, using those which are infallibly determined as our help, with the general analogy of Scripture, to search into the rest; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God? If there is no dispute about the Red Sea, why should there be about the waters of Marah? If the manna was unquestionably typical, why doubt the Sabbath connected with it? If the smitten rock in Horeb is pregnant with lessons for us, why sever from it the subsequent conflict with Amalek? Why nullify the beautiful picture which follows in Ex. 18, where Gentiles and Jews eat bread before God, and the leader of the people lays down the order and means of right government? Again the worship of the golden calf be so full of warning, what of the judgment which Moses executes with the sons of Levi? (Ex. 32) Has the pitching of the tabernacle without the camp no voice for us, and the deepened fellowship which Moses enjoyed with the Lord there, and his earnest pleading before him? Here, again, the New Testament casts its unwavering light upon an incident which, without it, we might have made of no account; for at first sight, it might strike the careless reader as the least promising, in a typical point of view—the veil which Moses put on his face in speaking with the children of Israel, and took off in going in before the Lord to speak with him, 2 Cor. 3.

To deny a figurative force to these other circumstances in Exodus, because one or two only may have the direct stamp of Paul, is to deprive us of an incalculable amount of their value. To say that we cannot understand them clearly and certainly, according to our general intelligence of Scripture, is to reduce Christians to the alliteration of a former economy: it would justify that dullness of hearing which the Apostle censures in the Hebrew saints, Heb. 5. They were unskillful in the word of righteousness, and needed to be taught explicitly what they ought to have been teaching. He had many things to say respecting Melchizedek; but their senses were comparatively unexercised to discern both good and evil. And when he does open that remarkable story as a shadow of Christ, he in no way intimates that all was said which might be said, but only what they were able to bear. Sufficient is furnished to quicken, not to clog, their feeble spiritual digestion. Thus no use is made of the bread and wine which Melchizedek brought out to the victors, while there is considerable reasoning upon the dignity of his office and person, surpassed only in the real and eternal glory of Christ. The moment the argument of the epistle requires the actual exercise of Christ's priesthood to be treated of, the Apostle glides on to the Aaronic intercession within the veil, based upon sacrifice. (Heb. 7:25, 8-10) How arbitrary, then, to assume that we have more, in such New Testament expositions, than clear light cast upon certain landmarks, that, thus using what we have, more may be given?

This is entirely confirmed by what we read of the holy places, sacrifices, feasts, and other rites, stated or occasional. It were utterly unreasonable, if we may venture on the ground of the objectors, to hold that the mercy-seat, the candlestick, and the altar are the only vessels of the sanctuary which have a typical significance, because others are thinly, if at all, explained, while these are clearly alluded to in Rom. 3, Rev. 1, and Heb. 13 respectively. Is it merely the covering lid which had a meaning, and not the ark of the covenant itself?—that holy throne whereon God rested in moral judgment of his people, the law within, and the cherubim its external supporters? The table, too, with its twelve loaves, had this no far-reaching value, as well as the candlestick with its seven branches? And the two altars, with their suited spheres, is one blind, and has the other alone an eye that looks onward? Were the robes of glory and beauty, which the high priest wore, for mere passing show? Or if the curious girdle tells a tale of service, what are we to infer as to the ephod and robe, and broidered coat, and breastplate and miter? Their consecration, too, is surely something for us; for if Christ loves and has washed us from our sins in his own blood, he has also made us kings and priests. In short, all things are ours—the washing, the blood-sprinkling, and the anointing; and all the sacrifices too, the sin-offering, burnt-offering, ram of consecration, and meat-offering. There were, no doubt, reasons why the Apostle could not then speak particularly of the sanctuary and its vessels. There is no reason to deny the force of all as figures, though we may not have equal clearness of view about each. The same considerations apply to the feasts and other ordinances in Leviticus. It is most anomalous to own that the passover and its accompanying feast of unleavened bread had a prophetic bearing, and to disown it in the feast of trumpets. It were passing strange that Pentecost should have its fulfillment, and that Tabernacles should have none. How much more simple and harmonious to infer that, as a whole, not merely the Levitical system, but the historical facts and times, persons and things of Old Testament Scripture, were ordered, selected, and presented in the word of God, so as to teach a little to those of small faith, more to those of larger spiritual measure, with an ever-increasing fullness as the eye becomes more single to Christ, and the ear more attuned by the Spirit to his voice?

But if this last remark be admitted, as it is to us clear and certain, their fallacy is obvious who try to squeeze the types of Scripture into a human system. Every branch, indeed, of revealed truth has been stripped of its bloom and fragrance by a similar process. If there be any which more than others resist, and suffer from such violence, it appears to us to be the very twain which Dr. Fairbairn has chosen—the kindred themes of Scripture type and prophecy. His school has not been safe or happy. He is a good deal enamored of, and tinctured by, the novel speculations of German critics. He is keenly attached to the spiritualizing tendencies, which would blot out, if they could, the special hopes and inheritance of Israel from the chart of God's future counsels. He does not see that the church is but a little, though an exceedingly blessed and glorious, part of the purposes of God as to man. Accordingly, the work which God has now in operation, and which contemplates by grace ourselves as its objects, becomes in his view the all-absorbing idea. Every other of which the Bible speaks is as much as possible conformed to that standard. The state of things under the fathers and Israel is exalted somewhat, the characteristic points of the present economy are considerably depressed, the grand distinctions of the age to come are well-nigh ignored, so as to obliterate, as far as fancy can, those differences of dispensation in which God has been thoroughly testing man, and displaying his own righteousness and grace and glory, to the ultimate and abiding joy of all who trust in him.

We would not be understood as slighting much that is really good and valuable in Dr. F.'s book. A good deal of what we have been insisting on in this paper is truth common to him and to us. Nor do we mean that Dr. F. is singular in making the church, so-called, the great center of movement in his system: for theologians in general are in the same way disciples of Ptolemy, rather than of Copernicus. But Dr. F. has the unhappy distinction of working out this fundamental error more systematically, as far as regards his two subjects, than perhaps any one who has gone before him. How this vitiates his work will appear abundantly. Thus in chap. 2, in showing how the relation of type and antitype implies that the realities of the gospel were contemplated from the beginning, he says that on this account “the gospel dispensation is called the dispensation of the fullness of times"; whereas it is as plain as can be that Eph. 1 so speaks of the future administration of the universe, when God shall gather together in one, under Christ's headship, all things both which are in heaven and which are on earth. And this is so far from being confounded with the aim and objects of the gospel dispensation, that the following verses pursue the latter topic in relation to those who are being gathered out from both Jews and Gentiles. If Dr. F. deny the justice of our accusation on the plea that, in this same vol. 1, page 61, he speaks of the Redeemer as “Himself the beginning and end of the scheme of God's dispensations,” we answer that he means the Redeemer solely in relation to his church, as far as human blessing is concerned. His various glories are merged in this one. Son of David, Son of Abraham, Son of man—all these and more are exclusively limited to him as head of the church. Thus, no space is left for the various circles which have him for their common center.

Dr. F. cannot prove that which is the very substratum of all his writings. We have shown more than once in The Bible Treasury, that the church of God, properly so designated, is peculiar to the present dispensation: Dr. F. affirms, without even attempting to demonstrate, its identity throughout all dispensations. Hence, to take in all the redeemed, he is compelled to reduce the idea of the church to “a nursery for training souls to a meetness for immortal life and blessedness.” Were this an adequate definition, his conclusion doubtless follows; for nobody questions that God has always been saving souls by his word and Spirit. But we deny his premises, and submit that he overlooks the doctrine of Scripture. It is not a question of words merely, as some would say, but of things. The New Testament is explicit, that the church is based upon redemption, not promised only but accomplished, and demands the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven as its formative power, uniting all, whether Jew or Gentile, in one body, of which Christ in heavenly glory is the head—a condition which was not true of the times anterior to the cross, and is not nor can be predicated of the saints who are to be called on earth during the millennium. Clearly, then, it is not a question of being saved only, but of other and higher privileges, ordered in the sovereignty of God and super-added to salvation. Dr. F., we repeat, cannot prove his thesis. He takes it for granted and continually asserts it because it is absolutely necessary to his system. He will hardly take advantage of a mistake in the common version of Acts 7:38, where “the church in the wilderness” means simply, really, and nothing but the Israelitish congregation there. Almost as rationally might it be argued from the mere term that “the church” is intended by “the assembly” in Acts 19. Neither the one nor the other, in the foundation or in the form, was the church of God as presented in the Scriptures which develop it. Dr. F. may flatter himself with being spiritual (as contrasted with Jewish or semi-Jewish interpreters), because he sees not Israel only but the church under the tutelage of the law and the rudiments of the world. He may reproach us with being Jewish, because we affirm that the Jews and not the church had to say to the Babylonish captivity. To us, we avow, it seems distressing confusion, to apply what is said of Israel to the church, as if it were all the same thing organically, though now improved and enlarged. To use it, as he does, without proofs, is to build without a foundation.

Dr. F. objects, with justice, to the vagueness of the rules laid down by such as Glassius, and offers his own specific directions, which are a decided improvement. But the fact is, that the most important pre-requisite for rightly interpreting the types is an adequate knowledge of the truth of which they are the forms. Thus, if a person confounded the character of two different acts, offices, dispensation, &c., he would in similar ratio make a jumble of their pre-figurations. Another element of seine weight is the nature of the surrounding context. This, duly applied, would cut off many popular turns, (e. g., the appearance of Esau borrowed by Jacob, which some make to figure the imputed righteousness of Christ!) Here, however, are Dr. F.'s five canons:

“Nothing is to be regarded as typical of the good things under the gospel, which was itself of a forbidden and sinful nature.” (I. 1:38.)

We must be guided not so much by any knowledge possessed, or supposed to be possessed, by the ancient worshippers concerning their prospective fulfillment, as from the light furnished by their realization in the great facts and revelations of the gospel. “(I. 143.)

We must “be careful to make ourselves acquainted with the truths or ideas exhibited in the types, considered merely as providential transactions or religious institutions.” (I. 143.)

“The type has properly but one radical meaning, yet the fundamental idea or principle exhibited in it may often be capable of more than one application to the realities of the gospel.” (I. 152.)

“Due regard must be had to the essential difference between the nature of type and antitype.".(I. 157.)

It is the practical application which is the main difficulty. God and his word will never admit of rules which can save us from the need of being spiritual, whether in intelligence or in walk. Such rules, like creeds and articles, have scarcely any positive value, though they maybe of use negatively for checking and correcting men in a path of error.

Types of Scripture: 2. Primeval Times

"The dispensation of Primeval and Patriarchal times,” is the general title prefixed to Book Second of the Typology. We must be forgiven if we regard it as a misnomer and an evidence of that laxity of thought which everywhere characterizes the work. The era from the creation to the days of Noah is not, properly speaking, the sphere of dispensations, any more than the eternity which opens with the creation of the new heavens and new earth—God's blessed answer at the close to man's miserable fall at the beginning of human history. The primeval epoch is nowhere in scripture styled a dispensation, (αἰών) or anything equivalent. It was not a course of time, marked by a certain specific character, and ruled by divine principles on the part of God; and this is the true meaning of a “dispensation,” save where the word is used in the wholly different sense of a stewardship, or administration, (οἰκοίομνα) as in 1 Cor. 9:17; Eph. 1:10; 3:2.

Doubtless, from the fall to the flood, God did not leave Himself without witness; but the period was not characterized by government entrusted to man. The law was not then given to a people separated from all others by peculiar privileges, nor had Gentiles as yet been suffered to exercise universal empire in the sovereignty and providence of God. These things and more (not to speak of the developed dealings of promise and grace) came in subsequently to the deluge, and they are the subject-matter of the dispensations, the millennium included, when every principle which has crumbled in the feeble hands of man, of Israel, and of the Gentile, shall be established and maintained in manifest unfailing glory by the Lord Jesus Christ. They will flow on till the judgment of the dead before the great white throne terminates such displays of God's ways among men, and ushers in the everlasting state; when they who despised or abused the holy grace of God shall meet the due reward of the evil which they feared not; when the family of the second Adam shall enjoy the blessedness procured for them by their Head, in whom they, while here, had trusted.

For, looking more closely at these early days, do we find anything like a period regulated under God on distinctive principles? The facts are as simple as they are opposed to the notion. There was a positive place and command given to Adam. “And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Obviously such was not the tenure outside Eden, or afterward. It was not a principle which governed men, or any portion of men, during a finite period. The tree of life, the creation-tree, was barred from the outcasts by divine power; and this, not in judgment only, but, in a certain sense, in mercy. For man was in sin, and death was the declared penalty. Not to have executed the sentence would have dishonored God, would have introduced hopeless confusion into His dealings, would have set His words openly at naught. And besides, what could “living forever,” then and thus, have been but never-ending misery to him whose sin was unremoved? But if the transient condition of Paradisiacal innocence differs essentially from the fallen sinful humanity which succeeded, there was no new system, set up thereon by God, no subsequent human test given to the antediluvians. Man sinned then without law, as afterward he sinned under it. It will be said, perhaps, that the first Adam had no sooner broken down, than God appeared and announced the last Adam. There is no doubt that such is the bearing of the judgment which God predicted of the serpent in Gen. 3 Unquestionably, also, His providential might and wisdom secretly ruled then, as always. But the question is of distinctive dispensational dealings on God's part, extending through the antediluvian period; and the answer is, there were none. These ages, ruled by characteristic features impressed on them by God, find their suited place and scope in the space that intervenes between the deluge and the “end” (1 Cor. 15), when, the kingdom being given up, God shall be all in all.

As to all this Dr. F. gropes in the dark, though it is but fair to add, that his mistakes are not uncommon. Thus he says, “In the whole compass of sacred history we find only three grand eras that can properly be regarded as the formative epochs of distinct religious dispensations. They are those of the fall, of the redemption from Egypt, and of the appearance and work of Christ, as they are usually designated; though they might be more fitly described, the first as the entrance of faith and hope for fallen man, the second as the giving of the law, and the third as the revelation of the gospel. For it was not properly the fall, but the new state and constitution of things brought in after it, that in a religious point of view, forms the first commencement of the world's history.” (Typ. i. 191, 192). It is plain that he is doubly wrong, in what is included, and in what is omitted. For instance, the all-important manifestation of God's ways to Noah (forbearance towards mankind founded on sacrifice, divinely instituted government, and covenant with the earth) have no place in Dr. F.'s scheme of divine dispensations, though its leading principles are still in force. On the other hand, it is absurd to call the fall “a dispensation;” or even God's announcement of the woman's seed in judging Satan. Nor was the clothing of Adam and Eve with skins “a dispensation,” any more than the Lord's setting a mark upon Cain. Not that faith did not take account of all these things, and look out for a Redeemer, who, if bruised Himself, should effectually destroy the evil one. But these are not the characteristics of dispensations, but rather the basis on which, substantially, all believers rest during every dispensation. But we must now turn to Dr. F.'s various chapters in their order.

The first (1 pp. 200-213) is devoted to a sketch of the fundamental truths which the history of the fall embodies. These, according to our author, are the doctrines, 1, of man's guilt and depravity; 2, of God's righteous character and government; 3, of grace and its provisions for the fallen; and 4, of the headship principle, by which, as ruin has come in through one, so through another the heirs might share in blessing. To these ideas, of course, we do not demur; but to us they seem more like the divisions of an ordinary sermon, than the unfolding of the magnificent Adamic types. In fact, the last point alone can be viewed as typical; the others are prominent moral lessons, but not types. It may seem incredible, but as far as we have observed, it is the fact, that the most momentous and strikingly beautiful shadow of better things, connected with our first parents, (save that referred to in Rom. 5:14,) is passed over in dead silence in this systematic treatise. The mystery of Christ and the Church, prefigured by Adam and Eve( Gen. 2), is not found there; it was a great thing in the Apostle's eyes (Eph. 5), however little it appears to, be in Dr. F'.s Incomparably better in this, and indeed in every respect save plainness of style, is the “Synopsis of the Books of the Bible.” “In Gen. 2 we have the special relationship of man with God, with his wife, (type of Christ and His Church,) with the creation; and the two great principles, from which everything flows as regards man, established in the garden, where man was placed in blessing; namely, responsibility, and a sovereign source of life—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life. In these two things, in conciliating these two, lies the lot of every man. It is what is developed in the law, and in grace in Christ. The law put life as the result of the perfect obedience of him who knew good and evil—that is, made it depend on the result of our responsibility. Christ having undergone the consequence of man's having failed, becomes (in the power of a life which had gained the victory over death, which was the consequence of that disobedience) a source of life eternal that evil could not reach, and that in a righteousness perfected in a work, which has taken away all guilt from him that has share in it—a righteousness in which we stand before God according to His own mind, and righteous will, and nature. His priesthood applies to the details of the development of this life in the midst of evil. In the garden the knowledge of good and evil did not yet exist; obedience alone, in refraining from an act which was no sin if it had not been forbidden, constituted the test. The condition of man, in contrast with every other creature here below, found its source in this; that, instead of springing from the earth or water by the sole word of God, as a living being, man was formed and fashioned from the dust, and God places him in immediate relationship, as a living being with Himself, inasmuch as he becomes a living being through God Himself's breathing into his nostrils the breath of life. All animated creatures are called living souls, and said to have breath of life; but God did not breathe into the nostrils of any in order to their becoming living souls. Man was, by his existence, in immediate relationship with God. It is important to consider this chapter as laying down, in a special manner, all the principles of the relationship of man, whether with God, with his wife, or with the inferior creation. Here were all things in their own order, as creatures of God, in connection with the earth; but man's labor the means of their growth and fruitfulness. Nor did rain from heaven minister fruitfulness from above. The mist that watered it rose from the earth, drawn up by power and blessing, but not coming down. Yet man was, as to his place, in a peculiar one in reference to God. Man did not dwell in heaven; God did not dwell in earth; but God had formed a place of peculiar blessing and delight for man's habitation, and there He visited him out of his garden, where he was placed by the hand of God as sovereign of the world, flowed rivers, which watered and characterized the world without. Upon Adam reposed the duty of obedience. The image of God upon earth, in the absence of evil from his nature, and as the center of a vast system around him and in connection with him, his own proper blessing was in his connection and intercourse with God. As soon as God had redeemed a people, He dwelt among them. Here He created, blessed, and visited. Adam, created the conscious center of all around him, had his blessing and security in dependence on, and intercourse with, God. This, as we shall see, he forfeited, and became the craving center of his own wishes and ambition, which he could never satisfy. Earthly nature, then, in its perfection, with man (in relationship with God by creation and the breath of life that was in him) for its center; enjoyment; a source of abiding life; a means of putting responsibility to the test; the sources of universal refreshment to the world without; and, if continuing in his created condition, blessed intercourse with God on this ground—such was the position of the first and innocent Adam. That he might not be alone here, but have a companion, fellowship, and the enjoyment of affection, God formed, not another man, (for then the one were not a center,) but out of the one 'man himself, his wife, that the union might be the most absolute and intimate possible, and Adam head and center of all. He receives her, moreover, from the hand of God Himself. Such was nature around man, what God always owns, and man never sins against with impunity, though sin has spoiled it all—the picture of what Christ, the church, and the universe shall be at the end, in power, in the obedient man. As yet all was innocence, unconscious of evil.” (Synopsis 1, pp. 10-13)

Chap. 3 is as striking a sample, perhaps, as could be chosen of the confusion which reigns in the author's system and book. The shadows and the realities, too, of God's ways in the government of the world, are lumped with the truths of redemption in one crude heap. Thus (in spite of considerable modification of his views put forth in the first edition, in spite of a professedly careful induction from their various notices in scripture, in spite of reviewing all the descriptions of their form and appearance, their designations, their positions and their agency, direct or indirect) Dr. F. sums up: that the cherubim were in their nature artificial and temporary forms of being, which united the highest kinds of creaturely existence on earth—man's first and chiefly; that they were set up before faith as representations of earth's living creaturehood, especially of its rational and immortal, though fallen, head, with reference to better hopes, which from the first gave promise of restoration, and afterward shone with clearer light; that this restoration to life was intimated to be in accordance with God's holiness; and that thus God's purpose was betokened to raise humanity to a higher than its original destination, For our part, we cannot but see in the cherubim the emblems of God's throne in connection with the creature and its responsibility—God's judicial action in power, which has reference to this world in contrast with redemption. We do not say, in contrast “with the redeemed;” for they, in a certain sense, will judge the world, but that is not redemption. The governing throne of God may meet, as it were, redemption; but they are exactly opposite in principle, because the latter is based on God's grace and power, the former on the responsibility of the creature.

The principal occasions where the cherubim appear are four. In Gen. 3:24, they do not hold forth Mercy; but, along with the flaming sword, menace the creature, now guilty, if he dared to force the way, The thought there is the title of God in glory and Judgment. “So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden, cherubims and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.” What has promise in a new man to do with keeping the way of that tree? Is man, in the presence of retributive justice, a keeper, in any sense, of the way of a tree of life? The idea is untenable and absurd. God's act in clothing the guilty with a garment which had its origin in the death of another (ver. 21), God's' word in ver. 15, did betoken mercy, but not the cherubim.

As to the cherubim in the tabernacle, (with two added in the temple,) the thought is at bottom similar. Formed of the same piece, they were the sides and supporters of the throne where God sat in Israel, the Judge of all, though in special relationship with His earthly people in whose midst He displayed Himself. The cherubim here, as elsewhere, were the symbolical executors of the divine power in judgment. “Here, (as we are well told, in the 'Synopsis,' p. 73,) God manifested Himself as the supreme God in His moral being, armed with power to enforce respect to His laws, and to keep account of all that was done.” Hence Psa. 99:1: “the Lord reigneth; let the people tremble [as in correct Bibles]: he sitteth between the cherubims; let the earth be moved.” It is still a throne where His majesty and judgment claim respect and fear. There is not the most distant hint of promise. So in Ex. 26 the tabernacle itself was composed of the same materials as the veil, the figure (as we know from Heb. 10) of the flesh of Christ, in His essential purity, with all the divine graces adorning it. The cherubim, which were there too, give still the idea of judicial power, which Christ has, and will exercise as man. (Comp. John 5:22; Acts 17:31.)

Next, while Ezekiel describes the likeness of a man associated with them, the feet are straight, and the face of an ox answers to that of a cherub, as has been often remarked, though man's face was there too. The human form was generally in view, but the characteristic face or foot was an ox or calf's. Then, that they were not supports of the throne is impossible to admit for a moment. (Comp. Ezek. 1:22, 26; 9:3; 10:18; 11:22.) The firmament was over their heads, and above the firmament a throne. From this, the fullest description, doubt is excluded. They were the basis of God's throne in the execution of judgment upon Jerusalem. They reappear at the close of the prophecy, when God is sanctified in the heathen or Gentiles, dwelling judicially in Israel, “for out of Zion shall go forth the law.” Ezek. 28 speaks of one destroyed from the midst of the stones of fire, and cast out of the mountain of God, because he was lifted up with his own beauty. But, instead of the anointed cherub there being a promise of restoration from a fallen condition, it is expressly said, (ver. 19,) “thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more.” As to the Hebrew or Greek words, translated rightly “living creatures,” Dr. F. seems to forget that they are the commonest terms possible for describing animals from Genesis downwards. Life is emphatic, as also activity and intelligence symbolized by the wings and eyes; but that it was, in the highest sense, spiritual and divine life, is more than the author has proved. Neither do we pretend to determine how far God may be pleased to use man as His throne in a figurative sense (that is, as the seat of His power). It is clear that the living creatures are the representative heads of the four main classes of created beings on earth—of such as were subsequently preserved in the ark. And even Dr. F. is compelled to own that their agency, as in Ezek. 10, is the putting in force the wrath of God, not promising spiritual life and restoration to fallen man.

Indeed Dr. F. cannot but acknowledge something analogous in Rev. 15 where one of the living creatures is represented as giving into the hands of the angels the last seven vials of God's wrath. “Nor” (says he, i. p. 239) “is the earlier and more prominent action ascribed to them materially different—that connected with the seven-sealed book” “The work, in its fundamental character, was the going forth of the energetic and judicial agency of God.” So say we, and, stranger still, in the words of him who had taught, two or three pages before (p. 236), that they are “an image of mercy and hope!” Further, he has no right to assume that the living creatures join with the elders in the new song, the redemption song, of Rev. 5—at least, not as if they were celebrating their own share in the benefits of salvation. For it is well known, that the most recent and certainly one of the ablest of New Testament textual critics rejects the “us” (ἡμᾶς) in Rev. 5:9 (as every scholar does in the following verse): the reference in that case being to the saints in ver. 8, and not to either elders or cherubim, though it be they who sing. They do not therefore “plainly stand related to the redemption as well as to the creative work of God” (1 p. 240). And as to our author's way of accounting, in the same page, for the disappearance of the cherubim, after Rev. 19, it is wholly unsatisfactory; because in p. 238 he had contrasted the royal elders and them as the actual and the ideal respectively, and in p. 240 he says, “that the ideal give way to the real.” The fact is, however, that in the Apocalypse the elders and living creatures vanish from view together. Nay, we are convinced that Ezek. 43 shows the cherubim, after this very epoch, upon earth as active as ever in a blessed and glorious but judicial way, when the Lord reigns. They do not therefore fade like the stars, but shine most in the day of the Lord; and their existence, so far from being temporary, is best fulfilled in that bright day, and this, because the creation and government of God, with which we have seen them inseparably bound up, will have their fruition, and accomplish their proper ends, in that day. On the whole, then, the author's scheme, as to the cherubic figures, is as unreasonable and open to objection as any speculations of his German friends which he justly condemns. That restored man may be connected with God in this place, we believe; but the place is displayed divine glory in creation and judgment.

Want of space compels us to pass over the two next chapters (4, 5), which deal with sacrifice and the Sabbath; but we do so the rather, as they will recur in a fuller form when we enter upon Israel's history and institutions. Chap. 6, with the Appendices, occupying the remainder of the volume, we reserve, if the Lord will, for our next.

Types of Scripture: 3. Typical Persons and Things in the Book of Genesis

Dr. Fairbairn devotes chapter 6 to “typical things in history, during the progress of the first dispensation.” The chapter, as long as it is varied, he subdivides into six sections, as follows: 1, the seed of promise—Abel, Enoch; 2, Noah and the deluge; the new world and its inheritors, the men of faith; the change in the divine call from the general to the particular-Shem, Abraham; 5, the subjects and channels of blessing—Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and the twelve patriarchs; and 6, the inheritance destined for the heirs of blessing. We think that our author is not a whit more successful in tracing these shadows of an auxiliary and supplemental character than we have found him in treating of the grand primary and symbolical facts.

Thus he considers that through Abel knowledge was imparted, especially in regard to “the principle of election, which, was to prevail in the actual fulfillment of the original promise.” Now we do not doubt that the names, given to Cain and Abel respectively, do indicate the hasty hopes, and perhaps the subsequent disappointment of Eve; as the name of Seth not obscurely bespeaks her confidence in God and His purpose, spite of her past mournful experience. Neither do we question that in the Cainites, as compared with the line that followed, we have the children of the world and the men of faith. But this principle of election is equally and even more strikingly true, when we come to the history of Ishmael and Isaac, of Esau and Jacob, not to speak of Abraham himself, the conspicuous example of a man chosen, called, and faithful. All the emphasis of italics fails: Dr. F. states merely what is common, instead of drawing the distinctive lesson.

How much more masterly is the sketch given in the Synopsis (pp. 15-17). “Abel comes as guilty, and (unable as he is to draw near to God) setting the death of another between himself and God, recognizes the judgment of sin—has faith in expiation. Cain, laboring honestly where God had set him to do so, externally worshipper of the true God, has not the conscience of sin; he brings the fruits which are signs of the curse-proof of the complete blinding of the heart, and hardening of the conscience of a sinful race, driven out from God. He supposes that all is well; why should not God receive him? Thus is brought in, not only sin against God, which Adam had fully wrought, but against one's very neighbor, as it has been displayed in the case of Jesus; and Cain himself is a striking type of the state of the Jews. In these two chapters (Gen. 3; 4), we have sin in all its forms, as a picture set before us in Adam's and Cain's conduct: sin in its proper original character against God, and then more particularly against Christ in figure, with its present consequences set forth as regards the earth In the history of Lamech we have, on man's part, self-will in lust, (he had two wives,) and vengeance in self-defense; but I apprehend an intimation in God's judgment that, as Cain was the preserved though punished Jew, his posterity at the end (before the heir was raised up, and men called on Jehovah in the earth) would be sevenfold watched over of God. Lamech acknowledges he had slain to his hurt, but shall be avenged. In the second chapter, then, we have man in the order of created blessing. In the third, man's fall from God, by which his intercourse with God on this ground is; foreclosed. In the fourth his wickedness in connection with grace, in the evil state resulting front the fall. Driven from the presence of God, Cain seeks, in the importance of his family, in the arts and the enjoyments of life, temporal consolation, and tries to render the world, where God had sent him forth a vagabond, as agreeable an abode as possible, far from God. Sin has here the character of forgetfulness of all that had passed in the history of man; of hatred against grace and against him who was the object, and vessel of it; of pride and indifference; and then despair, which seeks comfort in worldliness. We have also the man of grace (Abel, type of Christ and them that are His) rejected and left without heritage here below; man, his enemy, judged and abandoned to himself; and another (Seth) the object of the counsels of God, who becomes heir of the world on the part of God. We must remember, however, that they are only figures of these things, and that, in the antitype, the man who is heir of all is the same as He who had been put to death.”

As to Enoch and Noah, Dr. F. is just as vague as usual. “Enoch, as being the most distinguished member of the seed of blessing, in its earlier division, and the most honored heir of that life which comes through the righteousness of faith, is undoubtedly to be viewed as a type of Christ” (p. 278). Why and in what respects he is so to be regarded does not appear, save in a mere amplification of what is here cited: and that is evidently rather the characteristic of Christians than of Christ. Nor indeed have we any doubt that such is the true reference: for Enoch aptly sets forth the proper testimony and portion of the Church, as Noah strikingly represents the place of the Jewish people. The one bears witness beforehand to others of the Lord's coming in judgment, and is himself caught up previously, to be with Him in heaven; the other, a “preacher of righteousness,” is preserved through the divine judgments to begin the new world's history, governing in the name of God. But the author's system precludes his understanding these truths, and consequently blinds him to their foreshadowings. There are more than doubtful speculations in these sections, but we cannot occupy ourselves with, discussing them. Noah was the chief of a state of things where evil existed, but was restrained by authority committed to man by God; where sacrifice was the basis, and the rainbow was the sign of divine forbearance, an express covenant being made that no flood should again destroy all flesh upon the earth.

Equally indistinct is the sketch, in section 4, of the time and persons subsequent to the deluge. As to his we must again draw on the Synopsis (pp. 1923). “This special judgment and the special blessing, in connection with Israel, begins to show itself, for we are yet on earth here. The historical course of Noah's family is brought out in connection with these two points, the blessing and the curse in Shem and Ham. But this is a new subject, and we begin afresh with chap. 10. Chaps. 10 and 11 give us the history of the world as it was peopled and established after the deluge, and the ways of men in this new world. The posterity of Noah is given by families and nations, out of which from the race of Ham, arises the first power which rules by its own force and founds an empire; for that which is according to flesh comes first. By the side of this we have then the universal association of men to exalt themselves against God, and make to themselves a name independently of Him, an effort stamped on God's part with the name of Babel, (confusion,) and which ends in judgment and in the dispersion of the race, henceforth jealous of and hostile to each other. Lastly, we have the genealogy of the race by which God was pleased to name Himself; for God is the Lord God of Shem. The importance of these chapters will be felt. The preceding chapters gave us, after the creation, the great original principles of man's ruin, closing with judgment, in which the old world found its close. Here we have the history of our present world. The result of this history is that the world is set out by families. The fashion of this world has obliterated the memory and the perception of this, but not the power. It is rooted in the judgment of God; and when the acquired force of this world becomes weak, will be ever more apparent, as it now really works. The fountain heads were three, first named in the order—Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: the first being the family in which the covenant was to be established, and with which God was to be in relationship; then he who was in hostility with God's family; and last, though eldest and proudest, the Gentile Japheth. In the detail Japheth is given first. The isles of the Gentiles in general, that is, the countries with which we are familiar, were peopled by his descendants. But the great moral questions and power of good and evil in the world arose elsewhere, and the evil now (for it was man's day) before the good. The East, as we call it, was in the hands of Ham. There power first establishes itself by the will of one in Nimrod. A mighty hunter-force and craft-works, to bring untamed man, as well as beast, under his yoke. And cities arise; but Babel was the beginning of his kingdom; others he went out and built or conquered. Another branch of his family is marked as forming the races in possession of the inheritance destined of God for His people. Sheen comes last: the father of Hebrews, the brother of him who has long despised him as possessed of an elder brother's title.

“Such is the general result in the peopling of the world under God's ordering. The way was this. Man sought to make a center for himself. Will characterized all now; but in a multitude of wills, all impotent as centers, what can be done? A common center and interest is sought, independent and exclusive of God They must get a name for themselves to be a center. And God scatters into nations by judgment what would not fill the earth by families in peace. Tongues and nations must be added to families to designate men on the earth. The judged place becomes the seat of the energetic will of one—the apostate power. The beginning of Nimrod's kingdom was Babel. Tongues were a restraint and an iron band round men. In them God's history begins; He is the Lord God of Shem. We have dates and epochs; for, after all, God governs, and the world must follow—man belongs to God But of known history God's people have ever been the center. This comes down to Abraham. And here again a new element of evil had become universal, at least practically so. Idolatry (Josh. 24:2). We have seen the wickedness and violence of man, his rebellion against God, and Satan's craft to bring him into this state; but here an immense step is made, an astonishing condition of evil appears on the scene. Satan thrusts himself, to man's mind, into the place of power, and so seizes the idea of God in man's mind, placing himself between God and him, so that men worship devils as God. When it began scripture does not say; but the passage cited shows that it had contaminated even Shem's family, in the part of it which scripture itself counts up as God's genealogy in the earth, at the time we have arrived at. Individuals may be pious but in every sense the link of the world with God was gone. Here, therefore, we change entirely the whole system and order of thought; and a principle in exercise without doubt from the beginning, but not manifested in the order of things, declares itself, and comes into evidence in the history of the earth. Abraham is called, chosen, and made personally the depositary of the promises.”

But we must now turn to the rich field of scripture in which Dr. F.'s fifth section professes to glean—Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and his sons, as the subjects and channels of blessing. The history of Abraham he divides into three main parts—the call and its, results (Gen. 12-14); the covenants (Gen. 15-17); and the sacrifice of Isaac (Gen. 22) Here, again, we do not overlook many observations true and valuable, but we have to repeat that, viewed as a typical treatise, his method and applications are meager and defective, when not absolutely erroneous. But here also we must quote the “Synopsis,” which is to us a far pleasanter task than criticizing the Typology. “The revelation of God, when (we are) far upon Him, sets us out on the journey of faith, inspires the walk toward heaven. When in the heavenly position, God reveals Himself for communion and worship, and a full revelation of His ways. The Canaanite is in the land; but the Lord reveals Himself, shows the heir and inheritance when the Canaanite will be gone; and so Abraham worships by faith as before he walks by faith. This is the full double function of faith. The rest of the chapter (Gen. 12) is the history of his personal want of it. Pressed by circumstances, he does not consult God, finds himself in presence of the world, where he seeks help and refuge, and denies his true relationship to his wife, (just as has been done in respect of the Church,) is cherished by the world, which God at last judges, sending Abraham again out from it. During this period, and until he was returned to the place from which he started, he had no altar. When he left Egypt and returned to his strangership in Canaan, he had what he had before. What a warning for Christians as to the relationship of the Church with Christ! And however the world may be a help for the Church, this relationship cannot be maintained when we seek that help.” Then, as to Gen. 13, it is remarked that we have in Abraham the path of the heavenly man, and in Lot the believer linked with the world and suffering its vicissitudes, as soon appears in Gen. 14 “Such are the just discipline and faithful ways of God. These last circumstances are the occasion of the manifestation of the Kingly Priest, King of Righteousness and King of Peace, i.e., Christ, millennial king of the world, blessing victorious Abraham, and on Abraham's behalf, blessing the Most High God, who had delivered his enemies into his hand. In this picture, then, we have the final triumph of the family of faith over the power of the world, realized in spirit by the Church for a heavenly hope and association with Christ, and literally by the Jews on the earth, for whom Christ will be Melchizedek-priest in full accomplished position—Priest on His throne, Mediator in this character, blessing them and blessing God for them; God Himself then taking, fully and indeed, the character of possessor of heaven and earth. When God had thus revealed Himself, according to this establishment of blessing in power on the earth, through the priestly king. Melchizedek, naturally the actual blessing of the chosen people finds its place; and in chap. 15 we have the detailed instruction of the Lord to Abraham regarding the earthly seed and the land given to him—the whole confirmed by a covenant where God, as light to guide and furnace to try, deigns to bind Himself to the accomplishment of the whole.”

We need not dwell on the episode of Gen. 16—the effort on Sarah's part to forestall the promise of the Lord in the preceding chapter, which ends, as all that is of the will of the flesh and of man must, in disappointment and sorrow. Gen. 17 brings in God on the scene, the Almighty God, who talks with Abraham, opens out larger and higher hopes, not legally but unconditionally, though with circumcision annexed, i.e., a sign which confessed the death of the flesh. Gen. 18-21 is a fresh and beautiful unfolding of the thoughts and dealings of God connected with the promised seed. Then comes the figure of the death and resurrection of the seed in Gen. 22; the disappearance of the covenant form of blessing (Sarah) in Gen. 23; and the call of the Bride for the risen Bridegroom in Gen. 24. The history of Jacob is the striking prefiguration of God's ways with the earthly people, Israel, as we have had before the heavenly people, the Church. In the closing chapters, which concern the twelve patriarchs, we have the deeply interesting type, in Joseph, of Him who was sold by His brethren to the Gentiles, and, as it were, dead; afterward, and unknown to his kin, exalted to the right hand of the throne, whence He administers all authority over the world; has, meanwhile, a Gentile bride and children; but at length is made known to His brethren in glory, who had scorned Him in humiliation, who owed all to His sustaining wisdom and love, and, finally, are established through Him in the best of the land.

This mere syllabus of the types contained in the history of Genesis must suffice for the present, particularly as other papers in our current and future numbers will indicate what we conceive to be a truer and more distinct application. But we cannot close without a word on the sixth section, wherein the question of the inheritance is discussed. Here, though there is much that is sensible at the beginning, Dr. F.'s system necessarily distorts his conclusion and deprives him of one half of the truth. He proves clearly that the promise of Canaan to the fathers, as well as to their seed, involves the resurrection from the dead. He owns that, so far, the Rabbis, with all their blindness, seem to have had juster, because more scriptural, notions of the truth and purposes of God, than some popular Gentile theologians, who have been too much tinctured by Platonic philosophy. But when he proceeds to reason that as the risen body is to be glorified, so the inheritance it occupies must be a glorified one too, it is manifest that he overlooks other and connected truths. It does not seem to occur to him that, in the kingdom of God, earthly things are found as well as heavenly (Comp. John 3; Eph. 1:10, &c.; Col. 1; Rev. 21). At the least, he cannot take for granted the very thing which is denied by a large body of Christian men. Our scheme—that is, as we are convinced, the scriptural one—is neither heaven alone, nor earth alone, but both united under the dominion of the Lord Jesus Christ, with the glorified saints in the heavenly places, and men, in their natural bodies, especially Israel, blessed for 1000 years on the earth. These are harmonious but varied spheres of blessing, the risen saints being the instruments of the truly divine joy of love and beneficence with Christ, yet more conspicuously than the evil spirits are now the instruments of Satan's malicious and destructive power. It is remarkable that, as to this, Dr. F.'s quasi-spiritualism ends in denying the proper heavenly glory of the risen saints. All the inheritance they have to look for is the renovated earth. The testimony of John 14 and 17 the doctrine of Ephesians throughout, and of Hebrews, and not to speak of the Epistles of Peter and Jude, the pictures of Revelation go for nothing. The Church is reduced to a glorious earthly inheritance, after all, and, by a poor juggle of words, this is called heaven! “God can make any region of His universe a heaven and why might He not do so here,” &c.? But why, then, speak of both heavens and earth in the time of incipient and of perfected glory? The reason is, because the Bible distinguishes what Dr. F. here labors to confound.

To notice the appendices at any length would detain us too long. Suffice it to say that they refer—A. to typical forms in nature; B. to the Old Testament in the New, under six heads; C. to the doctrine of a future state; D. to sacrificial worship; and E. to the question whether the original relation of the seed of Abraham to the land of Canaan affords any ground for expecting their final return to it. This Dr. F. decides in the negative, chiefly because he assumes that the present dispensation is the last, and that the brightest visions of glory in Old and New Testament prophecy are to be realized either in the Church as it now is, or in the eternal state. No room is left for the distinctive features of the millennium for earth or for heaven. Dr. F. reads them not in his Bible.

Types of Scripture: 4. The Histories of Exodus

Here we enter upon the broader field of a people the special object of God's dealings. Individuals there are still, of course, prominent instruments for good or ill, as God or the enemy governed. But the distinctive display is of God's pity and power in behalf of His unworthy Israel, whom He redeems triumphantly in the face of their oppressors. But His people, as proud alas! as they were poor, abandon the twofold revelation which God had made of Himself, whether as the Almighty God of their fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or as the One who was now first known in peculiar relationship as Jehovah. Yes! unwittingly, but most truly, they look away from the promises, and cease to lean on His outstretched arm who had gotten them the victory, and at Sinai this fatal word was passed, “All that the LORD hath spoken we will do;” and the law came in with its awful distance, and darkness, and death too, too near. Up to this God had acted in pure grace towards Israel. But they appreciated His ways no more than they judged themselves aright. With the ignorance and self-confidence of the flesh, they supposed that, just as they were, they only needed to know the will of God in order to render an acceptable obedience: the rock on which splits every unconverted man who, in a measure, owns his responsibility to God, but assumes his freedom and his power to serve. But their pride had a speedy fall; and the golden calf witnessed the crash of the tables of stone, followed by a new interference of God, who, along with the law, introduced the mediatorial principle and unfolded, in the tabernacle and its vessels, &c., the beautiful shadows of the grace and truth which should come by the Lord Jesus Christ.

Such we conceive to be the general outline of this most instructive book. At the details we must now glance, and with scanty help from the “Typology,” which even here (vol. ii. pp. 4-6) resumes the assault upon the proper hope of Israel, or, as it is there styled, “the Church.”

Ex. 1 is the preface or introduction, presenting, in a few graphic strokes, the children of Egypt in the iron furnace, when “there arose up a new king which knew not Joseph.” Their increase and their might excite his crooked and malicious policy. In vain! “The more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew.” Not content with a rigor which embittered the captive with hard bondage, the king devises a murderous scheme, which, however, depended for its success on lowly women, who “feared God, and did not as the king commanded them.” The persecution of man not only drew out the favor of God in behalf of those menaced, but, in His singular and wise providence (Ex. 2), the daughter of the cruel king became the shield of Israel's future deliverer, in the person of the infant Moses. We might have imputed the secreting of the babe to mere amiable or strong parental feeling; but Heb. 11:23 shows that this is to overlook a deeper thing. “By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents.” “But, although providence responds to faith, and acts in order to accomplish God's purposes, and control the walk of His children, it is not the guide of faith, though it is made so sometimes by believers who are wanting in clearness of light. Moses' faith is seen in his giving up, when grown to age, all the advantages of the position in which God had set him by His providence. Providence may, and often does, give that which forms, in many respects, the servants of God for their work, but could not be their power in the work. These two things must not be confounded. It gives that, the giving up of which is a testimony of the reality of faith and of the power of God which operates in the soul. It is given that it may be given up: this is part of the preparation. This faith acted through affections which attached him to God, and consequently to the people of God in their distress, and manifested itself, not in the helps or relieves which his position could well have enabled him to give them, but in inducing him to identify himself with that people, because it was God's people. Faith attaches itself to God, and appreciates, and would have part in, the bond that exists between, God and His people; and thus it thinks not of patronizing them from above, as if the world had authority over the people of God, or was able to be a blessing to them. It feels (because it is faith) that God loves His people; that His people are precious to Him, His own on the earth; and faith sets itself thus, through very affection, in the position where His people find themselves. This is what Christ did. Faith does but follow Him in His career of love, however great the distance at which it walks. How many reasons might have induced Moses to remain in the position where he was! and this even under the pretext of being able to do more for the people; but this would have been leaning on the power of Pharaoh, instead of recognizing the bond between the people and God. It might have resulted in a relief which the world would have granted, but not in a deliverance by God, accomplished in His love and in His power. Moses would have been spared, but dishonored; Pharaoh would have been flattered, and his authority over the people of God recognized; and Israel would have remained in captivity, leaning on Pharaoh instead of recognizing God in the precious and even glorious relationship of His people with Him. God would not have been glorified. Yet all human reasoning, and all reasoning connected with providential ways, would have induced Moses to remain in his position: faith made him give it up.” (“Synopsis,” pp. 55-57.)

Nevertheless, like the blessed one whom he foreshadowed, his own received him not. He is rejected by that Israel whom he loved. “There is a difference (says the author of the “Synopsis,” p. 58) between this type and that of Joseph. Joseph takes the position, as put to death [in figure], of Jesus raised to the right hand of the supreme throne amongst the Gentiles, in the end receiving his brethren from whom he had been separated. His children are to him a testimony of his blessing at that time. He calls them Manasseh (because 'God,' says he, 'has made me forget all my labors and all the house of my father'), and Ephraim, (‘because God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction’). Moses presents to us Christ separated from his brethren; and although Zipporah (as well as Joseph's wife) might be considered as a type of the Church, as the bride of the rejected deliverer, during his separation from Israel, yet, as to what regards his heart, his feelings, which are expressed in the names he gives to his children, are governed by the thought of being separated from the people of Israel. His fraternal affections are there; his thoughts are there; his rest and his country are there: he is a stranger everywhere else. Moses is the type of Jesus as the deliverer of Israel. He calls his son Gershom, that is to say, a stranger there, ‘for,’ says he, ‘I have sojourned in a strange land.' Jethro presents to us the Gentiles, among whom Christ and His glory were driven when He was rejected by the Jews,”

Dr. Fairbairn's observations on the “bondage” call for scarcely any comment, chiefly because there is so little in them. It is a mistake to look for typical instruction here. Thus, in the first of these sections, he draws the lessons: 1St, that the bondage was a punishment from which Israel needed redemption; and 2nd, that it formed an essential part of the preparation requisite for their occupying the inheritance. (Vol. ii. pp. 12-22). This is followed by another dreary essay on the “deliverer and his commission” (pp. 23-33), occupied upon some of the more obvious facts in the early part of Exodus, the position of Moses, his first haste, his subsequent shyness, the burning bush, and the name of God, and closing with some deductions: 1St, as to the dueness of the time; 2nd, as to the deliverer's arising “within the Church itself;” 3rd, “not altogether independent of the world;” and 4th, as to his being “peculiarly of God.” As little can we say of the long discussion that succeeds. (Sec. 3, “The Deliverance,” pp. 34-57).

Much is said of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. It is really a simple matter. It has its parallel in the ways of God with man on a large scale; as when He gave up the Gentiles to a reprobate mind, and poured judicial blindness on the Jews. So He will yet do with professing Christendom, sending them strong delusion, because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved. In Pharaoh's case, as in all the others, the will was utterly wrong, and opposed to God from the first; when this was distinctly pronounced, God did harden and covered them with darkness to their merited destruction. God never made Pharaoh, nor any one else, to be wicked; but they, being wicked, had adequate and urgent testimonies which, by God's judgment, served but to blind the king, who from the first scornfully asked, “who is Jehovah that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not Jehovah neither will I let Israel go.” in p. 40, Dr. F. seems to speak of the miraculous vouchers which Moses was instructed to work at the commencement of his operations, as being precisely the field on which Pharaoh might be tempted to think he could successfully compete with Moses. But it was forgotten, perhaps, that though one of them—the change of the rod into a serpent, and vice versa—was repeated before the king and the magicians, these signs were primarily intended for Israel rather than for the Egyptians (Ex. 4:1-8, and 29-31). There is no attempt to explain their significance. The first appears to set forth the rod of power, assuming a satanic character, but afterward restored to its true place; and the second, the deeper ruin of man, as fallen into loathsome uncleanness, cleansed by God's immediate power and goodness. The third, which was more judicial in its nature, does not seem to have been called for by the Israelitish elders, but fell, in a yet more aggravated form, not as a token, but as a plague on the Egyptians—the change of what was originally given for refreshing man and fertilizing the earth into the revolting image of judgment and death.

As to the plagues Dr. F. remarks how excellently they were fitted to expose the futility of Egyptian idolatry, and to show how entirely everything there was at the disposal of the God of Israel, whether for good or evil. The first nine gradually ascend from the lower to the higher provinces of nature and of nature worship, till the tenth sounds the signal of Israel's redemption in the death of Egypt's first-born, announced from the beginning (Ex. 4:22, 23). But our author fails to discriminate the two parts in the deliverance. He notices “the first-born,” as representing all, and the blood of the lamb as the sign of mercy rejoicing against judgment, and the “borrowing” (Ex. 3:22; 12:35, &c.) as meaning really and simply a demand with which the Egyptians willingly complied, if they did not rather invite the Israelites to ask. But the precious, spiritual import of the Passover and Red sea must not be expected. For this we turn to the “Synopsis,” p. 65. “What happened at the Red sea was, it is true, the manifestation of the illustrious power of God, who destroyed with the breath of His mouth the enemy that stood in rebellion against Him —final and destructive judgment in its character, no doubt, and which effected the deliverance of His people by His power. But the blood signified the moral judgment of God and the full and entire satisfaction of all that was in His being. God (such as He was in His justice, His holiness, and His truth) could not touch those who were sheltered by that blood. Was there sin? His love towards His people had found the means of satisfying the requirements of His justice, and at the sight of that blood, which answered everything that was perfect in His being, He passed over it consistently with His justice and even His truth. Nevertheless God, even in passing over, is seen as judge. Hence, likewise, so long as the soul is on this ground, its peace is uncertain, its ways in Egypt, being all the while truly converted; because God has still the character of Judge to it, and the power of the enemy is still there. At the Red Sea God acts in power according to the power of His love: consequently the enemy, who was closely pursuing His people, is destroyed without resource. This is what will happen to the people at the last day, already in reality, to the eye of God, sheltered through the blood. As to the moral type, the Red sea is evidently the death and resurrection of Jesus and of His people in him; God acting in it in order to bring them out of death, where He had brought them in Christ, and consequently beyond the possibility of being touched by the enemy. We are made partakers of it already through faith. Sheltered from the judgment of God by the blood, we are delivered, by His power which acts for us, from the power of Satan, the prince of this world. The blood keeping us from the judgment of God was the beginning. The power which raised us with Christ has made us free from the whole power of Satan who followed us, and from all his attacks and accusations. The world who will follow that way is swallowed up in it.”

The fourth section of this chapter introduces us to the march through the wilderness, with the manna, the water, and the pillar of cloud and fire. The opportunity of the song of Moses was too good to lose for a thrust at those who by and by expect “a corporeally present Savior, inflicting corporeal and overwhelming judgments on adversaries in the flesh.” Dr. F. would gladly reduce the grand future dealings of God to providential actings, or victories to be won by spiritual weapons. The Lord coming to judge the quick—the habitable earth—is an unpalatable truth. Because He did not come in the type, it is inferred, most illogically, that He may not be personally looked for in the antitypical conflicts of the last days. But if Dr. F. can thus unseasonably foist in his postmillennial prejudices, he is apparently unable to see how the entrance of the desert is inaugurated with a song of triumph, which bespeaks faith's estimate of their complete deliverance by God's power, the security of His counsels in their behalf, and their confidence in His guidance all the way through.

Nevertheless, it is into the wilderness, not into Canaan, that God's deliverance brings His people: there trials of every sort appear and thicken. For three days after the song, they go through the wilderness and find no water. (Ex. 15:22.) Nor is this all; when they find some at Marah, the water is bitter. Spite of their murmuring, the Lord hears Moses, and shows him a tree, which, when cast in, made the waters sweet. “If death has delivered them from the power of the enemy, it must become known in its application to themselves (bitter to the soul, it is true, but, through grace, refreshment of life, for in all these things is the life of the Spirit). It is death and resurrection in practice after the deliverance. Thereupon we have the twelve wells and seventy palm trees —types, it seems to us, of these living springs and of that shelter which have been provided through instruments chosen of God for the consolation of His people” (Synopsis, p. 68).

Ex. 16 shows us Israel murmuring again, but the Lord answers in nothing but grace; though, as Moses and Aaron protested, the murmuring was against Him, and not them. They had murmured at Marah, yet the bitter waters were immediately sweetened. They murmured, now hungry, but the word is, “ye shall see the glory of Jehovah.” “I have heard,” says He, “the murmurings of the children of Israel.” What, then, was Moses to report? judgment? Wrath did come upon them another day, when, despising the manna, they insisted on meat, and persevered in their lust, when they ought to have been ashamed and sorrowing at their self-will and unbelief, rebuked by the miracle which laid it at their feet. But Taberah beheld the graves of lust (Num. 11) This, however, was after the law came in, and God righteously judged the sinners who presumed to make the blessing depend on their own power of obeying it. But up to Sinai it was not law, but grace. “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” Accordingly the Lord told Moses to say, “at even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread: and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God.” Their absolute need was now plain. In the wilderness, who but God could supply bread for such a multitude? But he did supply it bountifully, and at their doors. “He that gathered much had nothing over, he that gathered little had no lack; they gathered every man according to his eating.” Notwithstanding it was so given that day by day they must depend on Himself; no store could be—save to mark the sabbath, the day of rest. It is Christ, the true manna from heaven, who gives eternal life and brings us into rest. And this is the more striking, inasmuch as chap. 17 discloses (in the rock giving out water, followed by the fighting with Amalek) the clear type of Christ imparting the Holy Ghost, who animates and strengthens us in our conflicts. Here, too, the people had murmured for thirst, as before for hunger: but as grace rained bread and gave them rest, so did it supply living waters from the smitten rock, their refreshment in the battle that quickly ensued. The connection of the manna with the Sabbath is as useless in Dr. F.'s hands, as is the war with Amalek after the waters had flowed from the rock. So with the type of Joshua, (who always represents Christ in spirit fighting for and with His own,) going forth, while Moses, sustained by Aaron and Hur, is interceding on high. “Sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under the law, but under grace.” There is no fighting in Egypt. At the Passover, at the Red sea, God alone smote the foe; but now that the people are redeemed—now that they have found in Christ food and rest for their souls, and have received through Him the Spirit. as a well of water springing up into everlasting life, they are brought into conflict, victory in which is sure, for it is Jehovah that wars, through Israel, with Amalek. It is He who orders it to be written and rehearsed that He will utterly put out the remembrance of the enemy from under heaven. But then He wars through His people, and they are as dependent on Him in the fight as previously they were for their food. From this, their earliest struggle, but a struggle never to be relaxed till God alone take all in hand, the people are taught that to win the day is not by courage nor by strength, not by numbers nor by skill—nay, not by a just cause, were it the Lord's own cause and His people the assailed, not the assailants, Israel must learn the lesson, trying to flesh and blood, that all their success depends on the hands held up for them above. Blessed be the name of God! the hands of our mediator are never heavy. He needs no Aaron nor Hur to stay His hands; He is all that we want. Our need is to war only in dependence on Him; to be confident of victory, but no less confident that without Him we can do nothing; when victorious, to build our altar to Him who is our banner; but even in victory and in worship to be watchful, because Jehovah's oath is— “war with Amalek from generation to generation.”

The thoughts of our author on the cloudy pillar demand no particular notice; but it may be remarked that the striking scene in Ex. 18 is passed by in the “Typology.” And no wonder; for it is the sweet foreshadowing of an era whose true features are effaced for the eyes of the writer. From the Paschal lamb and the Red Sea we have had the types of grace reigning through righteousness. These are closed and crowned by the appropriate figure in chap. 18 of the millennial kingdom, and glory. Zipporah, the Gentile bride of Moses (who had been hidden in the father's house while the process of Egypt's judgment and Israel's deliverance was going on) is now manifested with the bridegroom. The name of the second son, Eliezer, first appears; for, as Moses said, “the God of my father was mine help, and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh,” the application of which, to the circumstances which immediately precede the joy of the millennium, must be obvious. Moreover the Gentiles are there, set forth by Jethro at the “mount of God.” Gladly the Gentile blesses Jehovah, who had delivered His people from their oppressors, and confesses that He is greater than all gods. That is, we have the prefiguring of the day when the sons of the stranger shall be brought to the Lord's holy mountain; when their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted on His altar; when (the Lord having avenged the blood of His servants, and proved His mercy to His land and people) the nations, not in principle merely, but in result, shall rejoice with them; when a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment. “He shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with judgment. The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills by righteousness.” “In his days shall the righteous flourish, and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth.”

The second chapter (pp. 86-194) is devoted to the subject of the law, and consists of six sections: I. What properly, and in the strictest sense, is termed the law, viz., the decalogue, its perfection and completeness, both as to the order and substance of its precepts; II. Apparent exceptions to its perfection and completeness as the permanent and universal standard of religious and moral obligation—its reference to the special circumstances of the Israelites, and the representation of God as jealous; III. Further exceptions—the weekly Sabbath; IV. What the law could not do—the covenant-standing and privileges of Israel before it was given; V. The purposes for which the law was given, and the connection between it and the symbolical institutions; and VI. The relation of believers, under the New Testament, to the law—in what sense they are free from it—and why it is no longer proper to keep the symbolical institutions connected with it.

That which has given us most pleasure is the frank acknowledgment in the last section, that Christian liberty involves deliverance from the law, not as to justification only, but as to walk and conduct. He rightly argues that it is this last respect which the apostle has in view in Rom. 6, 7. He meets the objection that this is to take away the safeguard against sin, by illustrations taken from a child no longer under parental restriction, and from a good man's relation to the laws of his country (pp. 178-182). The chief defect is—that this liberty is not set upon its right basis; viz., the possession of a risen life in Christ, as the consequence of accomplished redemption, and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, as the power of communion and obedience, so fully brought out in Rom. 8. Hence, for the want of understanding this, Dr. F. falls into a line of thought which is foreign to scripture. Thus, he says, p. 181, “if only we are sufficiently possessed of this Spirit, and yield ourselves to His direction and control, we no longer need the restraint and discipline of the law.” That is, he seems to consider our being under grace, and not law, as a point of attainment, instead of seeing that it is the common and only recognized ground on which the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus places all Christians. The death and resurrection of Christ are the key to this. It is not that the law is dead, but that in Christ we are dead to it, and alive to God under grace. Christ risen is our husband now, and not the law, “that we may bring forth fruit unto God.” Rom. 8:34 shows distinctly the triumphant result. The law never got its righteous requirement from a sinner. But what it could not do, God has done through redemption and grace. He has in His Son executed sentence on sin, not on acts merely, but on the whole thing, root and branch, thus perfectly freeing us who believe, “that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit.”

Types of Scripture: 5. The Tabernacle and Its Vessels

The introductory section of our new chap. 2 (book 3) enters at great length into the question why Moses was instructed in the wisdom of the Egyptians. Much of the argument appears to us extremely human, and it may be doubted how far anything satisfactory to the author himself is elicited. Such discussions tend to draw away attention from the genuine source of Moses' commission—the vision of glory in the burning but unconsumed bush—to the circumstances that preceded that great sight, or the flight into Midian forty years before. The worldly lore of Moses had no more to do with the deliverance which God wrought for His people, than the honor proffered by Pharaoh's daughter. The influence of these earthly advantages was rather negative than positive, inasmuch as they put Moses to the test, and proved whether he sought honor and ease for himself, or was the ready and willing servant of God's glory in behalf of Israel. Particular care seems to have been taken by God to guard against the rationalistic dream that either the redemption from Egypt, or the subsequent legislation in the desert, was derived, in any degree, from his early training in the learning of Egypt. Much more reasonable would it be to point us to the lessons he learned in solitary walk with God, as he tended the flocks of Jethro in the wilderness; for even the deliverer had to discover, by painful experience, that he was entirely dependent on God for the time, and the manner, and the wisdom, and the power that delivers. God would mark evidently that Egyptian might and knowledge could claim no part in His wonderful work. What was learned there must be unlearned first in lonely discipline; and the hasty zeal which supposed that his brethren must understand all at once the purpose of God is set aside, that the saving strength might have its spring and its direction in God Himself.

From more than one distressingly low and carnal reflection on this head, we turn to the happier theme of the tabernacle, or habitation of God, which He in His condescension deigned to occupy until the due time came when He settled His people in the outward rest of the kingdom—of course in type. A tent was all He would use previously; but that was the tent of meeting—not merely where Israel was to meet, but wherein God was to meet them. It was also called the tabernacle of testimony, because in its inmost recess lay the ark containing the tables which bore witness of that which God required front man.

In regard to the materials and general structure of the tabernacle and its utensils, Dr. F. discards symbolical meanings, and conceives simply that such metals, fabrics, &c., were employed as were at hand, and conveyed the most fitting impressions of God's majesty. Hence precious stones, gold, silver, blue, and purple, and scarlet; hence the choice of shittim or acacia wood, as the common and only suitable tree in that part of Arabia. But separate and spiritual meanings are eschewed as “without any solid foundation,” splendor of color and rarity being the grand considerations. “So far as the metals were concerned, we see no ground in scripture for any symbolical meaning being attached to them, separate from that suggested by their costliness and ordinary uses. A symbolical use of certain colors we undoubtedly find, such as of white, in expressing the idea of purity, or of red, in expressing that of guilt; but when so used the particular color must be rendered prominent, and connected also with an occasion plainly calling for such a symbol. This was not the case in either respect with the colors in the tabernacle.” Of course, we altogether reject such an arbitrary settlement of the question, as well as the reason for it in the contradictions of typologists. Our ignorance, or that of others, ought never to weigh when we approach a book filled, as scripture is, with a divine purpose from one end to the other. If it were simply a description of some human personage, decked out after his own fancy, we could understand no stress laid upon the choice, save as evidencing his own state of mind; but to assume that God directs certain colors, &c., to be used, corresponding with a pattern shown above to Moses, and that no moral meaning is to be gleaned from all, is a far more serious error than the precipitance which suggests a mistaken signification. It is to create a solitude, a waste, and to call it peace and wisdom. It is to give up seeking to understand a precious part of God's word.

“Of what, then,” says Dr. F., (vol. 2 p. 236,) “was the tabernacle a type? Plainly of Christ, as God manifest in the flesh and reconciling flesh to God.” With the general idea we agree, if we did not know that the sentence only keeps the promise to the eye, for in p. 243 the characteristic error of the typical writers is said to be for the most part understanding everything “personally of Christ.” It may be, too, that the phrase, “reconciling flesh to God,” is not intended to convey anything strange and unsound. But we do object to it as an unscriptural expression, calculated to cover and countenance the evil spirit of semi-Irvingism, which, we fear, is far from being wholly exorcised from its northern haunts. The Bible teaches, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself; but that is another thing, and evidently in contrast with His government under the law, which put sinful men far off, instead of seeking such. When Jehovah came down on Sinai, bounds were set, and death menaced him who should venture to touch the mount. But God was in Christ, reconciling, not repelling, and trespasses were discovered in all their hatefulness, but not imputed, as was necessarily done in the legal system. Such, too, was the aspect of God in Christ, not merely to Israel, but to the world. But this has nothing really in common with “reconciling flesh to God.” Still less is there anything resembling it in the blessed actings of God which laid the basis of all reconciliation in the cross and death of Christ. For man was too far gone to be profited even by the incarnate Son of God: he was lost, and salvation by blood was absolutely needed, and a new and risen life from God. The true doctrine, then, is not that Christ's flesh was the representative and root of all flesh as redeemed, but that He has reconciled us who believe, in the body of His flesh THROUGH DEATH. Thus divine favor flows through, and rests on the ground, not of incarnation merely, but of redemption. Christ was the “seed corn,” no doubt, but that figure is the one expressly used by our Lord to show that, till death and resurrection, there was and could be no fruit of like kind. “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” Enemies as we were, we could not be reconciled to God save by the death of His Son. Nothing short of the cross could reconcile us unto God in one body, because there only the enmity was slain. Hence, whatever the blessed and perfect display of God and man in His person here below, Christ is never treated as head of the body till He arose “the beginning, the first-born from the dead,” and ascended to heaven. He was born King of the Jews, as He had ever been and ever shall be the only begotten Son of the Father; but headship of the Church was a new relationship, only taken in resurrection and heavenly glory. As to all this no small confusion reigns in the “Typology.”

The true design of the tabernacle, viewed in all its parts, in the book of Exodus, we believe to have been mainly two-fold. First, there was the display of the ways of God to man; and secondly, there was the presentation of man, or of the priests who acted for man, to God. A remarkable proof and confirmation of this appears in the arrangement, which at first sight seems peculiar, not to say disorderly; for the golden altar, on which the incense was burned, is not classed with the other vessels of the sanctuary (Ex. 25), nor is the laver treated of in the full description given of the outer court where the great brazen altar of burnt-offering appears (Ex. 27) It is absurd, if we only think of Moses, to imagine that such a disposition of the holy vessels was the result of negligence or hazard; it is wicked so to think, if we own that God inspired the book, and directed the entire matter. As the directions stand, all the details of the vesture and consecration of the priesthood come in between certain of the holy vessels. It is not that they divide those pertaining to the holy of holies, nor even those of the holies in general, from the court outside. Man might have so arranged things, and called it order.

But the order of God is al ways profound and complete, and our wisdom is to follow and learn, not to judge, save in the sense of discerning its admirable propriety. Here, though not obvious, and thus more manifestly from above, the grouping is beautifully perfect. For we have the priests regulated in their due place (Ex. 28, 29) before the Spirit enjoins those things which distinctly typify the means of drawing near to God, or what the priests required for their sanctuary services. In other words, the first portion runs from chap. 25 to chap 28:19, and consists of the various manifestations of God, from the ark in the most holy place down to the brazen utensils and pins of the exterior court. The next two chapters concern Aaron and his sons, with the prefatory verses about the oil which fed the ever-burning lamp—though even here we doubt not that the idea, true of every institution before the priests are formally introduced, is the manifestation of God spiritually. But after they are fully brought before us, we have, in chap. 30 the golden altar of incense, reserved till now, the ordinance of the atonement, the money for the service of the tabernacle, the laver of brass, the holy anointing oil, and the perfume or incense for use “before the testimony.” The reason is plain. These, one and all, set forth, not God's displays to man, but the gracious provision for such as draw near to God; and therefore they rightly follow the account of the due attire of the priests, and of their official inauguration. This divine line of demarcation has altogether escaped the notice of Dr. F., or of the German theologians whom he generally follows.

The consequence of neglecting God's land-marks is plain. Another order usurps its place, and confusion is the inevitable result. The view borrowed from Hengstenberg is utterly inadequate to account for the phenomena within and without the sanctuary: it gives no key to the remarkable groups in which God has set things. It is a poor solution of these enigmas to lay down as an indisputable maxim that the holy of holies presents the things to be believed concerning God, and the holy place the things to be done by His believing people. Or, to cite the words of our author, “as Christ's whole undertaking is something sui generis, and chiefly to be viewed as the means of salvation and access to heaven, provided by God for His people—as under this view it was already symbolized in the furniture and service of the most holy place, it is better and more agreeable to the design of the tabernacle to consider the things belonging to the holy place as directly referring only to the works and service of Christ's people.” (p. 333.) Said we not truly that when Dr. F. spoke of the tabernacle as a type of Christ (p. 536), his words were not to be trusted? Here the larger, though we allow not the most momentous, part is spoken of as directly referring only to the works and services of Christ's people. Now we deny not, for a moment, the blessed manner and extent of the Lord's identification of His people with Himself; we allow that this is marked in a clear way in the instruments of service which met the eve in the sanctuary. But we affirm that the explanation offered fails in seizing the really salient points of the truth God is disclosing, and this as to both divisions of the tabernacle, not to speak of its surrounding court. Thus the ark is entirely divested of its true bearing, when viewed as the symbol of “the means or salvation.” The mercy-seat was really the throne of God's holy presence in the midst of Israel; the law beneath, which attested the righteousness which He could not but exact, and the cherubim, not looking outwards, as in the day of glory, pictured by the temple's order, but looking inwards and towards the mercy-seat. They were the emblems of the judicial power which guarded His throne and righteousness. Now not a word appears in all this, shadowing the means of salvation. Hence, Dr. F. is compelled to connect therewith the rites of the great day of atonement, as detailed in Lev. 16. But this is to wander from the end of the Spirit in the book of Exodus, in this particular part of it, which does not bear on the way and means of approaching God, but develops the various displays of God Himself. The design is to display God enthroned according to the rights of His moral nature, though in relationship with Israel.

The table of shittim wood, overlaid with gold, which comes next, but without the veil, of course, is the manifestation of God in man, as the golden candlestick is His display by the Holy Ghost—both the one and the other found in perfection in Christ Himself, like that closest of all set forth in the holiest. In every particular, then, Dr. F. is in error. None of these vessels, as exhibited in Exodus, properly refers to the means of salvation and access to heaven; all of them refer directly to divine manifestations in Christ, however by grace we may have fellowship and identification with Him in some of them. The same remark applies to the particulars about the tabernacle, its coverings, veil, and door in Ex. 26, as well as to the court and such of its contents as are given in Ex. 27. In this space, outside, the great altar overlaid with brass was the conspicuous object, where the people met God, or rather where He is here represented as manifesting Himself in righteousness about sin and in love to the sinner—the place, not of sin-offerings, but of burnt-offerings, where Christ, by the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot unto God, where he who believes may draw near to God displaying Himself in grace.

Again, if we glance for a moment at the golden altar in Ex. 30, the seriousness of the error is apparent, for being an instrument of service outside the veil, it must directly refer only to the works of Christ's people, according to the canon of Dr. F. That is, Christ is positively blotted out from the ministrations of the sanctuary. The golden altar and its incense directly refer to us, and not to Him, according to this calmly stated but rash theory. Are Christians really prepared for this?

Dr. F. may introduce saving clauses to conciliate those who would reject such a summary rejection of Christ from a large, if not the highest, department of His priestly office: for we must not forget that in the types Aaron acted, not only in the holiest, but in the sanctuary; not exclusively, of course, but most prominently. In the antitype, it is Christ in various spheres, Christ in the highest heavens, Christ in the heavenly places, the proper and destined home of our glory, and Christ in relation to the earth, that we have set forth in the tabernacle and its external precincts, where Israel drew near to God. But it is quite clear that if Dr. F.'s view were correct—if the sharp line of limitation which appropriates the inmost shrine to the types of Christ as the object of faith, and the apartment outside the veil to the representation of what Christians should be and do—the Lord Jesus must not be immediately and directly connected with any vessels save the ark and the mercyseat. And even on his own showing, the theory which thus limits the Lord to the holiest, and His people to what was found on the other side of the veil, does not stand the test: for, as we have seen in a previous part of the book, (and it is repeated here too,) the cherubim, made of the same piece as the golden mercy-seat, are regarded by the author as representations chiefly of “redeemed and glorified humanity,” the “ideal heirs of salvation” (p. 302). Christ, therefore, instead of being the grand object as well as expression of God, instead of being impressed on the entire tabernacle, and on every part within and without, is restrained to the narrowest bounds that can be conceived.

Happily, the system is most inconsistent, and the language used, even respecting the altar in the court, is such as to suggest to others, if not to the author, that Christ alone is the full answer to that altar, as well as to the burnt-offerings which characterized it. Thus he says, in p. 283, “this altar of sacrifice was to be the grand point of meeting between God and sinful men, between God and man as sinful; and only by first meeting there and entering into a state of reconciliation and peace, could they afterward be admitted into His house, as those who had the privilege of communion and fellowship with Him. The altar was, in a sense, God's table,” &c. And where but in Christ is such a table, or meeting-place, between God and sinful man to be found? We trust that Dr. F. looks for it in Him only, and would repudiate it anywhere else. But if so, his systematic parceling out of the sanctuary and its court is fundamentally defective and erroneous. Christ is set forth everywhere, according to the heavenly pattern, and this in relation to sinful men on earth, as well as to His saints as such, and to God in the intimacy of His being and as the supreme object of worship and allegiance. The most holy place naturally answers to the heaven of heavens, and the holy place to the lower heavens, according to the principle laid down in Heb. 9:24—the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, and not man, as they are called in Heb. 8:2. The court without would, in like manner, correspond with the earthly scene of the manifestation of God to man and of his approach to God, as a sinner coming out of the world, not as a saint or priest, which is a relationship rather appertaining to the holy place. That we are justified in thus viewing the whole universe, including the heavens and the earth, as the house or habitation, “the true,” answering to the figures made with hands, is to us evident from Heb. 3:4, “Every house is builded by some man, but he that built all things is God.” The application of this could hardly be mistaken by an unprejudiced mind, least of all by the Hebrew believer, especially connected as it is with Moses the servant in the house of God. It is true that the tabernacle also applies to the Church, as the dwelling or house of God—Christ's own house, as we are here designated; and it is realized in the highest sense in the person of Christ Himself, the true temple. But these are far from being incompatible representations, but rather so many concentric circles round the one great thought—the habitation or dwelling-place of God, which, true of all, is emphatically verified in Christ and in His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all.

We do not, of course, coincide with Dr. F.'s incredulity, (p. 230,) as to any special and spiritual reasons for the drapery and disposition of Ex. 26, 27. though fully allowing that the details of this (as of every other subject, which depends on the measure of our subjection to scripture and intelligence in the Spirit) are open to ready misapprehension, and may be abused by mere fanciful conjectures. On these the reader will find some profitable hints in the “Synopsis,” pp. 75, 76.

Types of Scripture: 6. the Priesthood

The investiture of the Priesthood, laid down in the two following chapters (Ex. 27, 29), is deeply interesting, though both clothing and consecration have scanty measure dealt out in the “Typology.” Aaron had to be clothed with special vestments for drawing near to the Lord, as representing the people whose names he bore: the type of what Christ does for us in heaven, hidden in God, like the high priest in the most holy place on the great day of atonement. A priest supposes miseries, infirmities, failures; he is a mediator to intercede for and represent the people before God. By this gracious provision our wretchedness becomes the occasion, not of judgment, but of the display of God's compassion and tenderness, while our great High Priest presents us to God in His perfection. The detail of this appears in these types. Redemption is supposed as the ground. Priesthood is not to redeem, but to maintain those redeemed in spite of failure. The garments, &c., figure that which is real in Christ, exercising His priesthood for us.

The Ephod was characteristically the priestly garment. It was made of the same materials and colors as the veil, save that no cherubim are here, for it was the emblem of Christ's essential purity and varied graces, apart from His judicial rights. Gold, too, was here, not in the veil—the emblem of divine righteousness, which has its appropriate place, when the veil was rent in Christ, the heavenly priest. It had two shoulder-pieces to it, and stones of memorial, which bore the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. There was an embroidered girdle which accompanied it, the sign of service, and a breastplate, which was to be carefully secured to the ephod, and which also bore twelve precious stones, each inscribed with the name of a tribe. Thus, if Aaron drew near to God, the weight of the people was upon his shoulders. So our government is upon Christ, in the presence of God. His glory there, His nearness to God, cannot be separated from us. He is there for us. Nor is it merely a question of His strength bearing us up before God, but in Him we find all the precious reality foreshown by the breastplate of judgment. If a ray of God's goodness and glory shines on Christ, it shines also on us, who are carried on His heart; for the heart of Christ presents us before God. It is not some special things on our part, but ourselves that He presents, according to the love which reigns between the Father and the Son. We are continually before God, who never hides His face from us. He may chastise us for our faults, that we may not lose communion with Him, nor be condemned with the world. But if His face were hidden from us, it would be hidden from Christ: it is hidden now from Israel under law and the guilt of rejecting the Messiah. When we fail, it is a cloud that rises between God and us. Our will or our weakness is the cause, not the sovereignty of God. Nor is it that we require to be redeemed afresh, or that the blood-sprinkling needs to be repeated; but we have One who acts for us, and represents us worthily before God. He has the true Urim and Thummim in the breastplate of judgment. The blessing is given according to the lights and perfections of God; and our judgment is borne upon His heart before the Lord continually; for it was a question, we must always remember, not of acquiring righteousness, but of maintaining before God the cause of a failing people, and this, in our case, according to divine righteousness, which we are made in Christ. The consequence is most blessed and sure. Grace is exercised, not merely because we return to the God we had slipped or wandered from, but to bring us back. Hence John does not say, “if any man repent,” but “if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” The love Christ exercises about us springs from Himself. Thus we see, in Peter's case, it was not after his restoration, nor even when hiding for shame, that Christ said, “I have prayed for thee.” It was before he fell. Christ's intercession was going on all the while. It is exercised because of our getting wrong, not because we are right. Our feebleness calls out the grace that is in Him. It may be an answer in the way of strength, or chastening, or warning, and then chastening is not needed. But in whatever way, it is of grace; and He obtains the needed blessing for us, according to the favor which God bears Him. Christ looked upon Peter, and this before Peter wept. It was just at the right moment, wrong as Peter had been. We know not what Peter might have done next; but the look sent him outside to weep. Much more is this true now for all saints; for the atonement is finished, the righteousness is accepted on high, and Christ is there to keep or set us right. He has undertaken our cause through the wilderness, where a merely righteous power could not bring us through, but rather consume us by the way. He keeps us for a “memorial before the Lord continually.” He sustains us according to the power of inward grace before God. He bears us all and each in a detailed way, each by name engraved on His heart. According to our particular individuality He sustains us, and God looks upon us in the fullness of the complacency He has for Christ; just as we receive a child that is sent to us, according to the affection we have for its father.

This is precious; and the rather as it is the positive and divinely given provision for us in remembering, and yet counteracting, our individual imperfectness. Viewed as one with Christ, as members of His body, we are perfect: but this is a totally distinct thing from His representing us before God as priest, which is expressly to meet our failures. In the one case we are seen in Him; in the other He acts for us on the footing of a righteousness which never changes nor fails, in order to reconcile our practical state and circumstances on earth with the standing which faith has in Christ above.

In these beautiful garments, then, was the high priest called to represent Israel, and neither shoulder pieces nor breastplate could be loosed from them, that their names and their cause might be in perpetual remembrance. Aaron could not be thus with God, save as representing Israel. Equally impossible is it for Christ to stand in God's presence apart from us.

His value in God's sight is thus drawn down on us.

He became a servant when He took the form of man. He might have asked twelve legion of angels, and gone out free; but He chose to be a servant forever. He did the will of God in His life, and in His death He bound Himself anew and eternally, and will thus manifest the grace of God, even in the glory, when He will gird Himself, and make His own servants sit down to meat, and come forth and serve them.

Such is our position by virtue of the priesthood of Christ. “If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” If a fault is committed, is there condemnation? No: but this is not because the gospel is less holy than the law (which is quite the contrary of the truth), nor is it because God thinks lightly of the sins of His children (which are, indeed, incomparably more grievous and dishonoring than the evils of others), but because Jesus Christ the righteous is there for us. But then He does deal according to His own light and perfection, even when He feels for us in all our need and weakness. It is the same in learning things of God, as in our daily judgment. It is according to Urim and Thummim that He instructs and guides us. What under law would be my ruin becomes by His grace the occasion and means of instruction. It is not only when we have outwardly failed that Jesus intercedes, but when in holy things we go to worship God, how often something comes in which cannot suit the holiness of God, distracting thought, human feeling, admiration of fine tones in singing, &c.! God would not have us to think lightly of such a thing, for it is through want of habitual communion with Him; but He comforts us with the assurance that we have got in Christ the reality of Aaron's miter, with its golden plate and inscription—HOLINESS TO THE LORD. Thus when we worship, we may bow down and look up, not in lightness indeed, but in happy, holy liberty. We ought not to be satisfied without the full tide of affection going up to Him from us; but let us ever bear in mind that we are accepted because of His holiness. Hence in a new and higher strain may we take up that ancient oracle: “Sing unto the Lord, O ye saints of his, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness.” The iniquity cannot be accepted, but it never goes up. We may always go to God because of Christ's constant appearing in His presence for us. He bears our failures that they may be judged—our weakness and ignorance, that strength and instruction may be given; but His heart is always engaged for us; His love is drawn out by our very and every need. It is not, on the one hand, that the evil is not corrected; nor, on the other, that we are put out of God's sight and memory for it, but that it is remedied because of Christ's all-powerful pleading—the same One who is the propitiation for our sins, and in whom we are accepted. This gives us courage to apply unsparingly the divine light and standard to our ways—not as if the question were of expecting condemnation by and by, but, emboldened by His grace, to judge ourselves thoroughly now. Our privilege is to increase in the knowledge of God Himself. We sin if we walk not in the light we have received. There is holiness in God's presence, but there is unfailing grace also. Our enjoyment is in the measure that we, by the Spirit, realize what we are in Christ before God. Our prayers rise in holiness before Him, because Christ is there. The taints and soils in our holy offering disappear through His mediation. While this makes us feel the extent of the love of which we are the objects, may it fill us with thanksgiving, and our joy be full! “Such an high priest became us.”

But we must allow ourselves to quote an admirable passage from the “Synopsis.” “The ground-work of the priesthood, then, was absolute personal purity—what we may call human righteousness—every form of grace interwoven with it; and divine righteousness [typified respectively by the fine linen and the gold]. It was service, and He was girded for it, but service before God. The loins were girt, but the garments otherwise down to the feet. This was especially the robe all of blue Introduced into the presence of God, according to divine righteousness, in the perfection of Christ, our spiritual light, and privileges, and walk, are according to this perfection of Him into whose presence we are brought. Christ bearing our judgment takes away all imputative character from sin, and turns the light, which would have condemned it and us, into a purifying, enlightened character, according to that very perfection which looks on us. This breastplate was fastened to the onyx stones of the shoulder above, and to the ephod above the girdle below. It was the perpetual position of the people, inseparable from the exercise of the high priesthood as thus going before the Lord. What was divine and heavenly secured it—the chains of gold above, and the rings of gold with lace of blue to the ephod above the girdle beneath. Exercised in humanity, the priesthood and the connection of the people with it, rests on an immutable, a divine and heavenly basis. Such was the priestly presentation of the high priest. Beneath this official robe he had a personal one all of blue. The character of Christ, too, as such, is perfectly and entirely heavenly. The sanctuary was the place of its exercise; so the heavenly priest must himself be a heavenly man; and it is to this character of Christ, as here in the high priest, that the fruits and testimony of the Spirit are attached—the bells and the pomegranates. It is from Christ in His heavenly character that they flow: they are attached to the hem of His garment here below. His sound was heard when he went in and when He came out; and so it has been and will be. When Christ went in, the gifts of the Spirit were manifested in the sound of the testimony, and they will be when He comes out again. The fruits of the Spirit, we know, were also in the saints. But not only were there fruits and gifts: worship and service, the presenting of offerings to God, was part of the path of the people of God. Alas! they also were defiled. It formed thus also part of the priest's office to bear the iniquity of their holy things. Thus the worship or God's people was acceptable, in spite of their infirmity, and holiness was ever before the Lord in the offerings of His house—borne on the forehead of the high priest, as His people were on the one hand presented to Him, and on the other, directed by Him, according to His own perfections through the high priest.”

There is nothing particularly calling for notice in the remarks of Dr. F. on the ceremony of consecration. He does not appear to distinguish the two anointings of Aaron, though he sees the fact of course, and objects justly to Mr. Bonar's view as unsatisfactory. The truth is that the first unction of Aaron is a beautiful allusion to the Lord Jesus, who needed not blood as a prerequisite, but without sacrifice, and by reason of His own inherent and perfect holiness, was capable of being anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power. Such we know was the fact. But thus He was necessarily anointed alone. Therefore was the necessity of a second unction, if others were to share it—the true sons of Aaron, whom God gave Him. Risen from the dead, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, He received the Spirit afresh (Acts 2:33), and shed it on the disciples, who were now constituted His priestly house. They were sinful men, and the blood was essential as a preparation for the holy anointing oil, which represented, not the operation of the Spirit in cleansing (already set forth by the washing of water), but His presence in the way of power. They were now endued with power from on high. Nor is it wonderful that a writer, who holds such views as Dr. F.'s, should be incapable of appreciating the deeply interesting scene which preceded the fire that consumed Aaron's offering in Lev. 9:24. First, Aaron blesses the people on coming down from his various offerings; then he, with Moses, goes into the tabernacle, and both come out and bless the people, when the glory of Jehovah appears, and the fire of divine judgment burns the offering, in token of plenary acceptance and favor; and this on the eighth day, the day of resurrection-glory. The application is obvious, save where a false system blinds the eye. First, there is Christ, as priest, blessing in virtue of sacrifice; and then Christ, as king and priest, goes for a short season into that which typifies the heavenly places, and coming out blesses the people, and the display of glory and acceptance takes place in that day. It is a beautiful witness of the millennial kingdom and worship—not of the Church within, but publicly manifested glory.

Types of Scripture: 7. The Offerings of Leviticus

In the present paper our aim will be to present a sketch of the chief subjects of interest in the third book of Moses. Within our narrow limits, no more can be contemplated than a rapid survey of the leading and distinctive ideas, as far as they are understood by us. Hence, also, we shall make use of what is excellent and instructive in the “Synopsis,” rather than occupy space with a detail of errors and defects in this part of Dr. Fairbairn's “Typology.”

It is evident that the grand thought here is not, as in Exodus, the deliverance and redemption of God's people and their establishment, as such before Him, whether under the law, or under the mediatorial system of divine government, which gives room for figures which are the manifestation of God to man, and for such as set forth the presentation of man to God, both alike, and only, found in Christ. In Leviticus the characteristic theme is access to God—the means or forms of it (chap. 1-7); the persons charged with it (8, 9); the things suitable to those standing in such a relationship with God, and the discernment of what defiled (10-16); the provisions of the day of atonement for the purification of the sanctuary, the priesthood and the people (16); directions for guarding from impurity both people and priests, in their relations with God, with each other, or in any respect whatever (17-22); the entire circle of the feasts, viewed as God's assembling His people around Himself, and His ways towards them from first to last (22); then we have the intervention of the priesthood that there might be light before God, when darkness reigned without, and that the memorial of His people might be ever fragrant, side by side with the blasphemy of Jehovah's name that sprang from the union of an Israelite with an Egyptian, and its terrible doom. Next we have the sabbatical year, and the jubilee for the land, which God claimed as His own; and the blessed consequences for the heirs, as well as the inheritance. All pertained to Him, and He would surely, in due time, assert and make good His rights in their favor. No sale nor slavery should prevail when once the trumpet sounded on the part of God. If chap. 26 opens out the miserable consequences of setting at naught the principles which God had laid down for the intercourse of His people with Himself, it does not close without a promise that on their repentance, whatever their ruin, He will remember the covenant with the early and the later fathers, when he made known His name to them respectively, as Almighty and as Jehovah. The restoration of Israel will behold all the might and unchangeable purpose unfolded in both titles. The book concludes with the regulation of vows, according to the valuation of the priests.

Thus we may observe how justly Leviticus has been styled by some one, “the priest's instruction-book.” Accordingly, it is not the solemn utterance of God from Sinai, but “Jehovah called unto Moses and spake unto him out of the tabernacle of the congregation.” (Lev. 1) He is in the midst of a people already recognized as His, and He is communicating His mind as to their due means of approaching Him Manifestly, the work of Christ furnishes the sole ground on which God could have such relations. The book, therefore, begins with the various figures whereby the Holy Ghost foreshadowed that work, in all its aspects to God and to His people. It is to be remarked, also, that God begins, not with that which most nearly touches the need of the sinner, but with the display of perfectness which satisfied His own heart, in Jesus devoting Himself, at all cost, to God's will, to death, even the death of the cross. In other words, whatever may be the result in blessing to the sinner, God begins with His Son giving Himself up without spot, that God might be glorified. Hence we see the key to the difference of the order here, and that which governs when the wants of man (priests, chap. 8 lepers, chap. 14 or any others) are in question. In these cases, the sin-offering has ever the first place; but in the original institution, where Christ is looked at rather than the sinner, it comes last.

The first great distinction, then, is between the offerings for sin and trespass, and those which precede them in the earlier chapters of Leviticus. The burnt-offerings, the meat-offerings, the peace-offerings, were alike offerings made by fire, of a sweet savor to the Lord; they represent, in various forms, the infinite perfectness of Christ's offering of Himself to God. On the other hand, the sin and trespass-offerings were charged and identified with sin, and were never viewed as offerings of a sweet savor. The very word which described their burning was distinct, as was the place; for, save in a very partial and exceptional instance, offerings for sin were burnt outside the camp.

Of the three voluntary offerings, which rose up variously indeed, but all as a sweet savor, and expressive of the perfectness of Christ and His sacrifice unto God, the Holocaust, or burnt-offering, is the first in order and importance. It was to be not only unblemished, but the best of its kind— “a male without blemish.” “Nothing can be more touching or more worthy of profound attention, than the manner in which Jesus thus voluntarily presents Himself, that God may be fully, completely, glorified in Him. Silent in His sufferings, we see that His silence was the result of a profound and perfect determination to give Himself up in obedience to this glory; a service, blessed be His name, perfectly accomplished, so that the Father rests in His love towards us.... So in the burnt offering, he who offered, offered of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. Thus Christ presented Himself for the accomplishment of the purpose and glory of God. In the type, the victim and the offerer, were necessarily distinct: but Christ was both, and the hands of the offerer were laid on the head of the victim in sign of identity.” (Compare Psa. 40 with Heb. 10; John 10:18; 14:30, 31; Luke 9:51.) “How perfect and full of grace is this way of the Lord; as constant and devoted to draw near, when God should be thus glorified, and submit to the consequences of His devotedness, (consequences imposed by the circumstances in which we are placed,) as man was to depart from God for his pleasure. He humbles Himself to death, that the majesty and the love of God, His truth and righteousness may have their full accomplishment through the exercise of His self-devoting love.”

“The offering was to be made the subject of the fire of the altar of God; it was cut in pieces and washed, given up, according to the purification of the sanctuary, to the trial of the judgment of God; for fire as a symbol, signifies always the trial of the judgment of God. As to washing with water, it made the sacrifice typically what Christ was essentially—pure. But it has this importance that the sanctification of it and ours is on the same principle and on the same standard. We are sanctified unto obedience. He came to do the will of His Father, and so, perfect from the beginning, learns obedience by the things which He suffered; perfectly obedient always, but His obedience put ever more thoroughly to the test, so that His obedience was continually deeper and more complete: He learned obedience. It was new to Him as a divine person—to us as rebels to God—and He learned it in all its extent. Furthermore, this washing of water, in our case, is by the word, and Christ testifies of Himself that man should live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. This difference evidently and necessarily exists, that as Christ had life in Himself, and was the life (see John 1 and 5) we, on the other hand, receive this life from Him; and while ever obedient to the written word Himself, the words which flowed from His lips were the expression of His life—the direction of ours."...

“Here, then, Christ completely offered up to God for the full expression of His glory, undergoes the full trial of judgment. The fire tries what He is. He is salted with fire. The perfect holiness of God, in the power of his judgment, tries to the uttermost all that is in Him. The bloody sweat and affecting supplication in the garden, the deep sorrow of the cross, in the touching consciousness of righteousness, ‘Why hast thou forsaken me?'—as to any lightening of the trial an unheeded cry—all mark the full trial of the Son of God. Deep answered unto deep—all Jehovah's waves and billows passed over Him. But as He had offered Himself perfectly to the thorough trial, this consuming fire and trying of His inmost thoughts did, could, produce naught but a sweet savor to God. It is remarkable that the word used for burning the burnt-offering is not the same as that of the sin-offering, but the same as that of burning incense. It is not in the sacrifice we are considering that He has the imposition of sin on Him, but the perfectness, purity and devotedness of the victim, and that ascending in sweet savor to God: in this acceptability—in the sweet savor of this sacrifice—we are presented to God. All the delight which God finds in the odor of this sacrifice—blessed thought!—we are accepted in. Is God perfectly glorified in this, in all that He is? He is glorified then in receiving us. Does He delight in what Christ is, in this His most perfect act? He so delights in us. Does this rise up before Him a memorial forever, in His presence, of delight? We also, in the efficacy of it, are presented to Him. It is not merely that the sins have been effaced by the expiatory act; but the perfect acceptability of Him who accomplished it, the sweet savor of His sinless sacrifice, is our good odor of delight before God, and is ours—its acceptance, even Christ, is ours. We are one with Him.”

The meat, or cake-offering, sets forth Christ as a living man here below, and this as offered up to God. “His offering shall be of fine flour; and He shall pour oil upon it, and put frankincense thereon.” “This meat-offering, taken from the fruit of the earth, was of the finest wheat. That which was pure, separate, and lovely in human nature was in Jesus under all its sorrows, but in all its excellence, and excellent in its sorrows. There was no unevenness in Jesus; no predominant quality to produce the effect of giving Him a distinctive character. He was, though despised and rejected of men, the perfection of human nature. The sensibilities, firmness, decision, (though that attached itself also to the principle of obedience), elevation, and calm meekness, which belong to human nature, all found their perfect place in Him. In a Paul I find energy and zeal; in a Peter ardent affection; in a John tender sensibilities and abstraction of thought, united to a desire to vindicate what he loved, which scarce knew limit. But this predominates in a Peter. In a Paul, blessed servant though he was, he does not repent, though he had repented. He had no rest in his spirit when he found not Titus, his brother. He goes off to Macedonia, though a door was opened in Troas. He wist not that it was the high priest. He is compelled to glory of himself. In him, in whom God was mighty towards the circumcision, we find the fear of man break through the faithfulness of his zeal. He who would have vindicated Jesus in his zeal, knew not what manner of spirit he was of, and would have forbidden the glory of God, if man walked not with them. Such were Paul, and Peter, and John. But in Jesus, even as man, there was none of this unevenness; there was nothing salient in His character, because all was in perfect subjection to God in His humanity, and had its place, and did exactly its service, and then disappeared. God was glorified in it, and all was in harmony. When meekness became Him, He was meek; when indignation, who could stand before His overwhelming and withering rebuke? Tender to the chief of sinners in the time of grace—unmoved by the heartless superiority of a cold Pharisee, curious to judge who He was—when the time of judgment is come, no tears of those who wept for Him moved Him to other words than 'weep for yourselves and your children,'—words of deep compassion, but of deep subjection to the due judgment of God. The dry tree prepared itself to be burned. On the cross, tender to his mother, and trusting her in human care to one who, so to speak, had been His friend, and leant on His bosom, when His service was finished—no ear to recognize her word or claim, when His service occupied Him for God—putting both blessedly in their place, when He would show that before His public mission He was still the Son of the Father, and though such, in human blessedness, subject to the mother that bare Him, and Joseph His father as under the law; a calmness which disconcerted His adversaries; and in the moral power which dismayed them by times, a meekness which drew out the hearts of all not steeled by willful opposition In a word, then, His humanity was perfect—all subject to God—all in immediate answer to His will, and so necessarily in harmony. The hand that struck the chord found all in tune—all answered to the mind of Him whose thoughts of grace and holiness, of goodness, yet of judgment of evil, whose fullness of blessing in goodness were sounds of sweetness to every weary ear, and found in Christ their only expression. Every element, every faculty, in His humanity, responded to the impulse which the divine will gave to it, and then ceased in a tranquility in which self had no place. Such was Christ in human nature. While firm, where need demanded, meekness was what essentially characterized Him, because he was in the presence of God, His God, and all that in the midst of evil... for joy can break forth in louder strains, when all shall echo, 'Praise his name, his glory.'“

The prohibition of the leaven is explained fully in the pages which follow, and the mingling with oil, as well as the subsequent anointing, and other particulars. “He knew no sin; His human nature itself was conceived of the Holy Ghost. That holy thing which was born of the virgin, was to be called the Son of God; He was truly and thoroughly man, born of Mary, but He was man born of God. So I see this title, Son of God, applied to the three several estates of Christ, Son of God, Creator, in Colossians, in Hebrews, and in other passages which allude to it: Son of God, as born in the world; and Son of God as risen again from the dead. The cake was made mingled with oil, just as the human nature of Christ had its character, its taste, from the Holy Ghost, of which oil is ever and the known symbol. But purity is not power, and it is in another form that the bestowment of spiritual power, acting by the human nature of Jesus, is expressed. The cakes were to be anointed with oil, and it is written how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power, who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil. It was not that anything was wanting in Jesus. In the first place, as God, He could have done all things, but He had humbled Himself, and was come to obey; hence only when called and anointed, He presents Himself in public, although His interview with the doctors in the temple showed His relation with the Father from the beginning.”

The peace-offering may be briefly noticed. “It is the offering which typifies to us the communion of saints—according to the efficacy of the sacrifice—with God, with the priest who has offered it on our behalf, with one another, and with the whole body of the Church. It comes after those which presented to its the Lord Jesus Himself, in His devoting His life even to death, and His devotedness and grace in His life, that we may understand that all communion is based on the acceptability and sweet odor of this sacrifice, not only because the sacrifice was needed, but because therein God had all His delight Such, then, is all true worship of the saints; it is joying in God, through the means of the redemption and offering of Jesus; yea, one mind with God, joying with Him in the perfect excellency of this pure and self-devoted victim, who has redeemed and reconciled them, and given them this communion with the assurance that this their joy is the joy of Jesus Himself, who has wrought it and given it to them.

This joy of worship necessarily associates itself also with the whole body of the redeemed, viewed as in the heavenly places, whether actually gone before us, or yet in the body below. Aaron and his sons were to have their part also. Aaron and his sons were ever the type of the Church, viewed as the whole body of its members, having title to enter into the heavenly places and offer incense—made priests to God. For these were the patterns of things in the heavens, and those who compose the Church are the body of heavenly priests to God. Hence worship, true worship, cannot thus separate itself from the whole body of true believers. I cannot really come with my sacrifice unto the tabernacle of God, without finding necessarily there the priests of the tabernacle. Without the one priest all is vain; for what without Jesus? But I cannot find Him without His whole body of manifested people; God, withal, has His priests, and I cannot approach Him but in the way which He has ordained, and in association with and in recognition of those whom He has placed around His house, the whole body of those that are sanctified in Christ. That which walks not in this spirit is in conflict with the ordinance of God, and is no true peace-offering according to God's institution.” The remaining remarks on the required cleanness of the offerer, and on what constitutes real spiritual worship, are very valuable; but for these we must refer the reader to the work itself.

Last of all come the sin and trespass-offerings, the offerer here being regarded, not as a worshipper, but as a sinner; so that the question was not, at least in the first instance, his identification with the acceptability or the victim, but rather the victim's identification with his guilt. The entire distinctness of the subject from the preceding offerings is marked by a fresh statement of the Lord speaking unto Moses. Indeed a similar formula is used in introducing the subdivisions which relate to wrongs done to the Lord and wrongs against a neighbor. (See Lev. 4:1; 5:14; 6:1.) The first thirteen verses of chapter 5 are transitional, a sort of appendage to the first great class treated in chapter 4 but withal sliding into the character of trespass, and accordingly called by both names.

It will be observed that, in the first two of the four cases in Lev. 4 (i.e. the sin of the high priest or the people as a body,) the blood was sprinkled seven times before the veil, and it was put on the horns of the golden altar; in the last two cases (i.e. of a ruler, or an ordinary Israelite,) the blood was merely upon Se horns of the brazen altar. The reason is plain. In the former all communion was broken, and needed to be re-established; in the latter it was not the body whose communion was gone, but an individual only. The grand lesson is that God can forgive, but can never be indifferent to sin, let it be where it may; and that He ever deals according to His own rights and dignity, dwelling in the midst of His people.

Another thing worthy of note is, that however strongly the identification of the victim with the sin confessed might be shown in burning the body without the camp, the burning of the fat on the burnt altar testified with equal clearness that He who was made sin for us was He who knew it not. Indeed, as has been justly remarked, “nothing was so stamped with the character of holiness, entire, real separation to God, as the sin-offering.” It was the same thing pre-eminently in the blessed reality. Christ's bearing sin was what most manifested holiness, where all was perfectly holy.

Lack of room compels us to omit further details; but we hope, if the Lord will, to notice other types in separate papers, and not as reviewing Dr. F., which we here close.

Visible and Invisible Church

An invisible church (i.e. individual believers, in the midst of a professing body, which was severed from other men by religious rites) finds its real counterpart in the Jewish state of things, not in the Church of God as presented in the New Testament. In fact, it was out of such a condition that God gathered, on the day of Pentecost and afterward, “such as should be saved;” and these, gathered in one by the Holy Ghost, constituted the first nucleus of “the Church of God.” They were baptized by the Spirit into one body.

When the Church gave up the guidance of the Holy Ghost according to the word of God and the world subsequently came in like a flood, she did, as a fact, become “invisible;” but this was her shame and sin. It is not, nor ever was, the design of God And the believer is ever responsible to return to the divine ground on which the Church was meant, and is always bound, to stand. “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” It is a question of the will and glory of God, and hence to us a question of faith. This does not make the “two or three” to be the Church of God; (which would ignore its present ruin-state;) but it puts them on Church-ground; and they are that part of the Church which is visible.

Israel's Vocation

As we, Christians, are in relationship with Christ's Father, and our Father, with His God and our God, as the Church is united to Christ the Head glorified on high by the Holy Ghost, who baptizes us into one body here below, so Israel were called to be Jehovah's witnesses. They broke down under law; they will be restored in mercy, and made to stand in the latter day under Messiah and the new covenant, but it will be for the display of the glory of Jehovah, the unchanging God of Israel. Jerusalem shall then be the city of the Great King. The place and duties of them, of us, or any others always depend on the relationship.

The Vulgate

For some period after the first profession of Christianity in the West of Europe, all Christian writers seemed to have used the Greek as the ecclesiastical language, and not the Latin—no doubt for two reasons, mainly. In the first place, the apostles and early emissaries from the East spoke Greek, and, in many cases, no other tongue. Respect for these teachers, and imitation of them, naturally produced a continuation of their speech. In the second place, their existed a strong and a reasonable wish to preserve the unity of the Church, and to keep it from separating into fragments.

This wish, however, was in vain. In the third century, there were many influences at work, which were fast tending to divide the huge Roman empire, and the Church along with it, into two parts. In the West, the people of Italy, Spain, Gaul, and that portion of the other continent then known emphatically as Africa, of which Carthage was the principal city, spoke Latin, and owed their civilization and their Christianity also, almost entirely to Rome. They stood apart, therefore, from the people of the East, who spoke Greek, whose civilization and Christianity both were of older date than those of Rome; and who, in some respects, considered the Italians as still barbarous. In consequence of this constitutional variance between the East and the West, the Greek language obtained no permanent footing in the latter, but was gradually driven back to its original seats; and Latin Christians began to discard the Greek, and to revert to Latin as their common tongue.

And as gradually, and almost imperceptibly, a Latin version of the scriptures came into notice, which soon displaced the Septuagint. It was a literal translation from that venerable document, as far as the Old Testament was concerned, and from the original Greek of the New Testament. The exact time and place when this version was made are quite uncertain; but from being called the Old Italic (Vetus Itala) in the fourth century, it must have been effected soon after the completion of the New Testament. It could not have been effected before that completion, because it contained the whole of the Canon; at the same time it must have come into being before the year 200, A.D., for it is referred to by the renowned Tertullian, an advocate of Carthage, who lived about that time. The age of the Old Italic may safely be placed in the first half of the second century; and its birth-place was very probably the neighborhood of Carthage. It was here that Tertullian flourished, who was the first known Christian writer who used Latin, and to the influence of whose name in the West the gradual adoption of Latin by other Christians has been traced.

For 200 years this Old Italic was the only authorized Bible in western Christendom. It was always quoted, and it obtained that veneration which once was paid to the Septuagint. Indeed by many Latin fathers it was considered faultless. As afterward it was entirely superseded by the Vulgate, this Old Italic version, as a whole, perished. Fragments of it, however, found in various authors, have been collected and published by Flaminius Nobilius at Rome in 1588, and again by Sabatier at Rheims in 1743.

After Origen's great revision of the Septuagint in the middle of the third century, the world began to feel the inconvenience of having a disagreement between the Greek and the Latin scriptures; for while Origen's amended Greek text became the Textus Receptus, the Versio Itala agreed with the unamended Greek; and it occurred to Jerome, towards the close of the fourth century, to introduce the same changes into the Italic that Origen had introduced into the Septuagint. This Jerome, one of the four great Latin fathers, and the patron, if not the inventor, of monastic institutions, is said to have performed the work hastily, and even carelessly; and yet this work—the corrected Italic—remains substantially in the Vulgate of the New Testament to this day, and in the Psalters of the Roman and the Galilean Missals.

Jerome himself, even while the work of correction was proceeding, became aware of its imperfection; he resolved, therefore, to apply not merely to the Septuagint, but to the Hebrew itself, for more thoroughly amending the Italic version. He labored diligently, with the assistance of learned Jews, to acquire a knowledge of the Hebrew tongue, and then he recommenced his revision of the Italic. That part of this version, containing the Old Testament, was completely revised and re-edited; and yet we should be in error if we supposed that Jerome executed a new translation. He only did what our English translators did, he took the old translation for a basis, and amended those parts where he thought the Hebrew ought to be followed; but in substance the new edition resembled the old, and retained, in consequence, many of those peculiarities which the Vetus Itala had inherited from the Septuagint, such as the presence of the apocryphal books, the way of spelling the proper names, the titles of the books, the order in which the books stand, and especially that unnecessary retention of the word Dominus instead of Jehovah.

The New Testament, of course, he did not retouch, except to bring it up to the correct Greek of Origen, and, for the same reason (viz., because there was no Hebrew to go to) he might have been satisfied with the Septuagint version of the apocryphal books, in which version, indeed, they had originally appeared. But Jerome seems to have been so much under the influence of his learned Jewish friends, that he used certain Chaldee translations for correcting some of the books in the Apocrypha.

The improved edition of the entire scriptures, thus edited by Jerome, has been constantly styled the Vulgate (that is, the Versio Vulgata, or the version in common use); for during many centuries the western church knew of no other version. There can be no doubt of the importance of Jerome's labors; and yet we are told that it met, for some time, with the most decided opposition. In spite of the support given to it by Jerome's friend, Pope Damasus, people thought it was a needless innovation to alter that version of the Bible to which they were accustomed; and it was not till about the year 600 (i.e. 200 years after the publication of Jerome's Vulgate), that it was fully sanctioned in the Latin Church. This victory it owed to the authority of Pope Gregory I, that great and good man, through whose exertions our Anglo-Saxon forefathers were converted to Christianity.

Let us remember that this famous Vulgate version of the Bible was originally founded on the Old Italic, which was a literal translation from the Greek. The New Testament and the greater part of the Apocrypha remained so, being only brought up to the revised text of Origen. But the Old Testament was corrected by means of the Hebrew, and the apocryphal books of Tobit and Judith by means of Chaldee translations.

There can be no doubt that if we could have the Vulgate, as it proceeded from Jerome, we should possess one of the most important versions of the Bible; but it is a matter of history that its text soon became corrupted. Two hundred years elapsed before it quite displaced the Old Italic; and on account of the two versions being both in use at once, they were in some places confused together, and old errors reintroduced into the Vulgate. Moreover, the transcribers, during the dark ages of Europe, were often ignorant men, who could not exactly copy what they had before them; and the readers were far too uncritical to notice or to care for any mistakes that might have crept in. Even so early as the time of Charlemagne, about the year 800, its defects were known, and the celebrated Alcuin attempted a revision of it. So likewise, in a later age, did Lanfranc, the learned Archbishop of Canterbury, in the reign of William the Conqueror. But these attempts, and others like them, produced really very little result, beyond probably arresting the accumulation of errors; for none in those ages, even those accounted greatly learned, had any acquaintance whatever with either the Hebrew or the Greek, and could only compare one copy of the Vulgate with another.

Of course, all translations of the Bible, effected during those ages, were made simply from the Vulgate, as it then existed. The Anglo-Saxon version, for instance, which was gradually made during the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, was only a daughter of the Vulgate; and when, at a much later epoch, viz. 1378, at the very beginning of Richard the Second's reign, John Wickliff published his English Bible, he had no original to appeal to but the Vulgate, as commonly met with, imperfect as it avowedly was. When printing was introduced, in the middle of the fifteenth century, it was first directed to multiply copies of the Vulgate. The first printed book that issued from the press of Gutenberg was the Vulgate, now known as the Mazarin Bible, preserved in the library at Paris. As soon as printing presses were established in the various countries of Europe, they issued copies of the Vulgate, from the MSS. which happened to come to the printer's hands. And it was then that the imperfections of this ancient version became manifest; for these printed Bibles differed in many important respects: which then, was the true copy, or how could it be regained]

It was a prominent question of the day, how to settle the text of the Vulgate; and it deeply engaged the attention of scholars in every kingdom. It was one of the concurrent causes that stirred men's minds, made them reflect on the grounds of their faith, and brought in the Reformation. By a combination of circumstances that cannot be regarded as fortuitous, the exile of the Jewish rabbis from Spain had lately scattered a knowledge of the Hebrew Bible and of the Hebrew language over Europe, while almost at the same time the learned Greeks who fled from the victorious Turks, carried into the West their own tongue, and the Greek Testament. Scholars could now address themselves, with far greater means of success, to the amendment of the Vulgate, than they could do in the middle ages; and biblical criticism began to assume its proper place and dignity.

The Reformers did not hesitate to prefer the Hebrew of the Old, and the Greek of the New Testament, to any translation however venerable; but the Church of Rome, after a little delay, decided to adhere to what had existed for 1000 years. The Council of Trent, in 1546, took the subject of the scriptures into consideration, and finally determined that the Vulgate was the only authentic Bible, to which all other translations, and even the original itself, must conform. Still it was necessary to decide what was the Vulgate; and, after a great deal of discussion, the Popes undertook to produce a correct, and an infallible, edition of the Vulgate, which should have the sanction of the church. In 1570, Sixtus V. issued this authorized Bible, forbidding, under an anathema, any further disturbing of the text. But the errors of this edition, called the Sixtine Bible, were too glaring to be passed over; and, consequently, in 1593, Clement VIII suppressed the work of his predecessor, and published a second infallible edition, known as the Clementine Bible, which is the edition now meant by the Vulgate, the only one appointed to be read. All subsequent Vulgates are nothing but reprints of the edition of 1593, with all its mistakes reproduced and perpetuated.

The Church of Rome did great injury to the cause of biblical knowledge by forbidding any improvement of the text of the Vulgate. By preferring a translation of a translation to the original itself, she has committed an absurdity (especially as Jerome, the author of the Vulgate, wished to go back to the Hebrew); and by pronouncing both the Sixtine and the Clementine editions, each in succession, infallibly true, she herself teaches men to question the dogmatic authority upon which alone she recommends the Vulgate to the people. The consequence of this lofty opinion of the Vulgate is, that no translation can be tolerated which is not made from it. Our own common version, for example, is repudiated by English Roman Catholics, and the Douay Bible and the Rheims New Testament are sanctioned, because they have been rendered from the Clementine edition of the Vulgate.

But it must not be forgotten that the Vulgate was really the basis of ours, as of all modern European versions. [l] The originals were only used to correct what was amiss in previous versions. Hence we find so many traces of the Vulgate in our English Bibles, some of which have been mentioned. It is worth remembering that that peculiarity common to our own, to the Vulgate, and the Septuagint, of substituting Κυριος, Dominus, or LORD for Jehovah, is, in every case, traceable to Jewish influence. The translators of the Septuagint were Jews; the guides of Jerome in his Hebrew were Jews; the reformers received their Hebrew from the Jews also.

The confusion that exists in our translation, in the rendering of the Greek article, is easily explained when one remembers that the Vulgate was in Latin, where there is no article.

It is somewhat singular that the very arguments against endeavoring to amend the present translation (most of whose errors are from the Vulgate) appear to have been used against the Vulgate itself, until Gregory the Great overbore them. W. H. J.

Review of Waldegrave: 1. On Principles of Biblical Interpretation

HAD evidence been wanting of the extent to which the millenarian question has taken hold of the minds of thoughtful, intelligent Christians, it is afforded by Mr. Waldegrave's volume, and by the two laudatory notices of it mentioned below—all in direct antagonism to pre-millennial views. The Rev. lecturer, in the preface to his work, refers to “the prestige under which for many years past the tenets he has endeavored to combat have been urged upon the attention of the church,” while one of his reviewers remarks, that “it is in the English church that this theory has met with most favor. Of the evangelical party probably the majority are on that side, while the tractarians are at least favorably inclined to it.” He complains that, “though the press has for years been teeming with productions of every kind, in defense and illustration of this theory, hardly any clerical voice was raised against it,” but congratulates himself that this “can no longer be said.” The volume under review supplies the lack. “In the Bampton lecture now before us, we have a full treatment of the whole subject; the numerous foot-notes, and the large body of notes in the appendix, showing how well the author has digested the literature of the subject down to the latest.” Such is the testimony of the British and Foreign Evangelical; while the London Quarterly represents “the subject discussed in these lectures” as “one of large and growing interest and importance;” exciting “more attention and argued with greater spirit and energy in the present, than in any former period.” “No mean place,” we are told, “has it obtained in our current religious literature.”

Believing, as we do that, in its grand leading features, pre-millennialism is the truth of God, we cannot but rejoice in such testimonies to the attention it has awakened, and the reception it has met with among Christians of various denominations, and especially in the English church. As to the latter, the London Quarterly informs us, that “it is well known that the pre-millennialists' view is on the increase among the evangelical clergy in the established church of England; and it is this fact which led Mr. Waldegrave, as he says, 'not to hesitate to avail himself of the opening given by his appointment to the office of Bampton Lecturer, to indicate the many respects in which he believes the doctrine of a personal reign to be at variance with the plain teaching of Holy Scripture.'“

Statements such as these from the avowed rejecters of pre-millennialism can scarcely fail to prove gratifying to those who discern, in its spread and increase, nothing but the progress and triumph of truth. Nor have we the least need to quail before the opposition it has evoked. It is true, as one of the reviewers of the Bampton lecture almost admits, that a favorable change has taken place in the spirit and character of the controversy. “Those who contend for the pre-millennial advent and personal reign of Christ upon earth used,” he says, “to complain, that their works were read with a jaundiced eye, that the views of extreme writers were ascribed to the entire party, and that the whole question was misunderstood and misrepresented by their opponents.” No doubt such complaints were made, and with good reason. Any one familiar with the earlier stages of the controversy must certainly subscribe to the justice of the charge. Nor can we entirely accord with the British and Foreign Evangelical, that “such charges are not, and cannot be made now.” They certainly cannot be made with justice against such writers as Dr. Brown and Mr. Waldegrave. These authors have endeavored, and generally with success, to understand the positions maintained by their opponents; and any instances in which they have incorrectly stated the views and arguments against which they have employed their pens, may be accounted for on other grounds than that of willful prejudice or willful inattention. But what shall be said of the London Quarterly? It represents Dr. Brown to be “as fair in stating the opinions he combats, as he is successful in overturning them;” and of Mr. Waldegrave it speaks as furnishing “ample proof that he has thoroughly investigated the controversy; that every book of importance on both sides he has carefully examined; and that his views have been formed honestly, and with a sincere desire to know the truth.” Would that his reviewer had earned a similar character! In what pre-millenarian work did he find, as an argument for an eclectic and pre-millennial resurrection, the statement of the apostle, in 1 Thess. 4:16, that “the dead in Christ shall rise first?” Do not all the writers of that class agree with what the London Quarterly so labors to prove, that the apostle in these words simply affirms that the righteous dead will be raised prior to the change which is to pass on the living saints, and to the translation of both to meet the Lord in the air? We own to some degree of familiarity with the writings of premillennialists; but we know of none in which the argument is used, which the London Quarterly with so much parade first exhibits and then destroys. Such cheap and easy victories tend to damage rather than to aid the cause in support of which they are achieved. Pre-millenarian arguments may, doubtless, have been based on 1 Thess. 4: never, that we are aware of, on the assumption that the apostle asserts the doctrine of the first resurrection in the words “the dead in Christ shall rise first.”

Nor is this the only instance in which the views of his opponents are misrepresented by this reviewer. “Pre-millenarianism contravenes,” he says, “the many Scripture statements that the saints, glorified with Christ at his coming, are so absolutely secure in the possession of their perfected happiness, as to be beyond the power of attack from their adversaries. No conflicts can follow their enthronement in complete bliss.” Assuredly not: but where has this been called in question by pre-millennialists? On what foundation does the reviewer rest this charge against them of contravening this self-evident truth? He does not condescend to inform us. Had it been some rustic who, on first hearing of the “thousand years” and the “little season” which succeeds, had inquired in amazement, how such doctrine could comport with the perfect security of the glorified saints, identified, as these might be in his mind, with “the camp of the saints” and “the beloved city,” it would have been an easy task patiently to instruct him, that it is not “the glorified saints” who are supposed to be the objects of Gog and Magog's attack, but the earthly saints of the millennial state, who will not at that time have put on immortality, any more than we have now. But a writer in the London Review—a scholar, a critic, a commender of others for their fairness and impartiality, as well as for their acquaintance with the views they controvert—he ought not to need such instruction. He ought to have been better informed of what pre-millenarians teach, than to be capable of charging them with contravening what they hold, equally with this reviewer, as most certain and most dear.

Still, in the main, the tone and bearing of the controversy on the post-millenarian side has undoubtedly improved. Much is now conceded that was disputed at the first. As to the serious questions which remain, it is not now so much a contention as to what pre-millennialists mean, as an inquiry whether what they affirm be taught by Holy Scripture. Their writings, as well as the subjects to which these writings relate, have evidently been studied by the able men who have lately entered the lists against them. In this we heartily rejoice. Truth has nothing to fear from the most searching investigation. Should anything in premillennialism be proved by these esteemed antagonists to be contrary to God's Word, or not taught therein, none would owe them heartier thanks than pre-millennialists themselves. Nor do we question that many writers who bear this name have presented vulnerable points, which skillful opponents have been quick to discern, and able to overthrow. Some parts of Dr. David Brown's book on the second advent we deem unanswerable; but they are those in which he assails, with righteous indignation and complete success such notions as that of the endless succession of human generations in the post-millennial state. But as to the great questions of the advent, and of the nature of Christ's kingdom, we confess that neither in his book, nor that of Mr. Waldegrave now before us, have we met with anything to shake even for a moment our conviction, that the views which they oppose are true, and demonstrated to be so by the Word of God.

In one thing we cordially agree with Mr. Waldegrave, namely, that “The controversy before us is, of all others, one which Scripture alone can determine. We may not appeal for its decision to tradition, whether Rabbinical or patristic. The one only question is this, What saith the Scripture?” But then it is the whole of Scripture, not one part of it exalted at the expense of other parts, by which the question must be determined. Above all, it must be by the diligent and prayerful perusal and study of the prophetic portions of Scripture, both in the Old and New Testament, that prophetic questions are to be decided. We never think of referring chiefly to the perceptive parts of the sacred volume to decide doctrinal difficulties; and if it has pleased God that a third part of the Old Testament, and one whole book in the New, should consist of prophecy, it seems strange to remove the investigation of prophetic questions from this vast field of prophetic instruction, to other parts of Scripture which confessedly consist in the main, not of prophecy, but of narrative, doctrine, and precept. Such seems to us to be the drift and tendency of Mr. Waldegrave's opening lecture. The principles of interpretation which it inculcates seem to us to call for the gravest consideration, before they are adopted as our guide in the discussion of the important subjects to which the seven remaining lectures are devoted.

The opening lecture is the subject of special commendation by both reviewers. “The best feature of the work before us,” says the British and Foreign Evangelical, “is the high vantage ground on which he plants his foot at the very outset, and from which he puts forth all him strength.” “He wisely commences,” says the London Quarterly, “in his first lecture, by affirming in the most explicit manner, that the Scriptures are our only authority in doctrine, and lays down two important principles, or rules, by which we are to be guided in our interpretation of those Scriptures.

These rules are introduced by our author himself in a passage, to the opening sentences of which we cannot but demur. “Before we begin our Scriptural researches, it is most important that the principles according to which they are to be conducted should be clearly defined. For there is no controversy in which fixed laws of biblical interpretation are more needed—none in which they have been less observed.” Now, at the risk of differing from some of our pre-millenarian brethren as well as from Mr. W., we cannot forbear inquiring, Whence does the need arise, the existence of which is here so confidently affirmed? Where does Scripture itself inform us of any such need? For our own part, we have a deep distrust of rules of interpretation previously laid down. Who thinks of adopting any rules or principles for interpreting Mr. W.'s language, before he commences the perusal of the Bampton lecture? There may be literal statements here, and figurative expressions there; but who would postpone the perusal of the book, until he had determined how the one class was to be distinguished from the other, and as to which class should have the precedence in fixing the meaning of the writer? It is not thus we read other books; we suffer them to make their own impressions on our minds, never doubting that the literal and the figurative will each commend itself to us in its own proper character, and the meaning of the writer be apparent in both. And when the book is worth perusing, these expectations are justified. Why should we adopt any other plan in reading the Word of God? May we not safely trust ourselves with it, and with its divine author—that indwelling Spirit, whose illuminations are never withheld from the humble, trustful, prayerful student of God's Word? “We may not indeed appeal to tradition,” as our author says, “whether rabbinical or patristic?” No, we would add, nor to modern, human rules of interpretation, which, when once adopted, make Scripture speak a language that they force upon it, instead of leaving it, and every part of it, to speak in its own language to the understanding, the conscience, and the heart.

The two rules on which Mr. Waldegrave builds so much, and which meet with such high commendation from his reviewers, are as follows: we give them in his own words.

“Those rules are embodied in the two following axiomatic propositions.

“First—in the settling of controversy, those passages of God's word which are literal, dogmatic, and clear, take precedence of those which are figurative, mysterious, and obscure.

“Secondly—in all points upon which the New Testament gives us instruction it is, as containing the full, the clear, and the final manifestation of the divine will, our rightful guide in the interpretation of the Old.”

These rules, be it observed, or, at least one of them, our author does not establish by proof, but assumes, as self-evident. We are told by the London Quarterly, that “Mr. W., with great force of argument, successfully establishes the two 'axiomatic propositions' which he lays down as essential to the correct interpretation of the word of God.” Our author himself, however, so far from arguing in favor of both his rules, says of the first, (p. 9), “None will care to dispute it.” And again, “this is the statement of a self-evident truth.” Again, (p. 12), he speaks of “the postulate which thus removes the decision of the millenarian controversy out of the province of the Apocalypse.” In favor of his second rule, Mr. W. does adduce some arguments; but he has the consistency not to speak of it as self-evident. It is for the London Quarterly to commend him for establishing, with great force of argument, a postulate, or self-evident truth!

We do not, however, admit, and we think that many will hesitate to admit, either of these rules to be self-evident truths. Each contains certain elements of truth; but in the form given them by our author's pen, the order in which they stand in his opening lecture, and the use to which they are applied both in that and in his subsequent discourses, the object is but too manifest of removing from the court the chief witnesses on whose depositions the settlement of the case fairly depends.

Our first remark is on the order in which these rules or propositions stand. We are far from imputing any unfair design to the rev. author; but had the order been inverted, had the first proposition been the one which asserts the supremacy of the New Testament, had the reasoning which establishes it, (by the fact of the Great Prophet's words being therein contained), been first presented to the reader's eye—above all, had it been declared that “in the New Testament as a whole, and not merely in the gracious words which fell directly from his lips, the voice of Jesus is heard” (page 18)—had the question been asked (page 21,) “Where are the great Prophet's words recorded?” and the answer given, “in the whole New Testament Scriptures;” —had this, we say, been the order of our author's discourse, the reader might have been startled to be told, in the second place, that one whole book of the New Testament—the prophetic book—is, in the examination of prophetic subjects, to share the fate of the Old Testament, and yield the palm of supremacy to some portions only of the New, which our author deems fittest to be the arbiters of the controversy. The contradiction would have been manifest and glaring first to have exalted thus the New Testament “as a whole,” and then to have reduced its chief prophetic portion to a level with the Old. But, by arranging these propositions as they actually stand, appearances are saved, the Apocalypse quietly disposed of in the first place, and then “the whole New Testament Scriptures” mean, for the present controversy at least, the whole, minus the Apocalypse and any other portions which Mr. Waldegrave may deem “figurative, mysterious, and obscure!”

But why, we ask, this marshalling of Scripture against Scripture? this exaltation of one part of God's Word over another? To us it appears a hazardous course; nor can we deem the cause a good one, which requires such a mode of defense. True, we have the author's repeated assurances, that he believes the whole volume to be inspired, and that he does not wish to depreciate those portions which he would place in the back ground when prophetic questions are discussed. These assurances we are bound to receive; but we must not, on this account, shrink from examining other statements of his book, and considering their probable effect on those by whom his views may be adopted. That we may in this do Mr. W. no injustice, we give his own words.

“In the pursuit of his object, the author has appealed to the Lord and his apostles, as they speak in the literal portions of the New Testament volume. For he is convinced that they constitute the one divinely appointed court of arbitration in all such matters of exegetical controversy.” Pref. page 12.

“Our present inquiries must be first directed to the strictly doctrinal portions of the sacred volume. For all the prophecies abound in metaphor and allegory.” Page 10.

“In a matter controverted (if I may so speak) between the Apocalypse and other portions of the divine word, that book cannot by itself determine the question; appeal must be had to authority higher, not in point of inspiration, but in point of literality of doctrinal statement upon the subject under discussion.” —Pp. 11, 12.

“The literal sense of a passage may not militate either against the nature of things, or against the tenor of the immediate context, and yet stay, at the same time, come into serious collision with the proportion of faith.” —Page 14.

“But this leads me to the real difficulty of the case. How does this rule apply when the words of Jesus Christ cease to be merely supplementary to, or explanatory of, those of Moses and the prophets? What shall be done when a seeming conflict arises between them?” Page 25.

After treating of the acknowledged contrariety between the ritual law and those New Testament revelation by which it has been abolished, our author proceeds:

“Nor is the case materially altered when it is the prophets who are seemingly at variance with Christ. For there are, unquestionably, times in which the teaching of Christ appears, directly or by implication, to militate with the announcements of Old Testament prophecy, when at least those announcements are understood in their plain and literal sense. What shall be done? Another meaning of the prophets' language must be sought for.” Page 27.

“He therefore shows the most true appreciation of their high dignity—yes, and he manifests the most true reverence to Scripture as a whole, who surrenders many a pleasant fantasy, rather than consent that the prophets should even seem, where no imperative necessity exists, to contradict their Lord. Page 28.

Let these quotations be pondered by the Christian reader, and let him judge whether we give an exaggerated account of our author's principle, when we say that it arrays Scripture against Scripture, and exalts one part of it at the expense of another.

What can be the meaning of the last quotation? No doubt every fantasy, pleasant or unpleasant, ought to be surrendered, rather than that any theory should be adopted which would represent the prophets as contradicting their Lord. “Which would represent them” thus, we say; for we cannot conceive that any contradiction should really exist between writings which are all and equally inspired. For this reason we wonder what Mr. W. can intend by urging the surrender of many a pleasant fantasy rather than that the prophets should even seem, where no imperative necessity exists, to contradict their Lord. It is the exceptional clause which exceeds our comprehension. What can constitute such a necessity as it contemplates? Sad must be the theory, whether pre-millennial or post-millennial, in which the existence of such a necessity is involved!

Human interpretations of God's Word may, doubtless, be at variance with each other, and with God's Word itself. But what our author sometimes states, and at other times implies, is the possibility of Scripture statements themselves being apparently opposed to each other. He speaks of the literal portions of the New Testament, as the one divinely appointed court of arbitration. Arbitration, and in a court, supposes litigation. Who are the parties in the case? In a matter controverted (if he may so speak) is his reply, between the Apocalypse and others portions of the Divine Word, that book cannot by itself determine the question, but appeal must be had to higher authority. We do not insist here on the absurdity of making the literal portions of the New Testament parties to the suit as well as arbiters of the question; we only furnish proof that the point of which our author treats is the supposed existence of questions, or differences, between one part of Scripture and another. He sometimes maintains that such differences are possible, while at others he seems to say that they exist. “The literal sense of a passage may not militate either against the nature of things or against the tenor of the immediate context, and yet may, at the same time, come into serious collision with the proportion of faith. “The real difficulty of the case, he affirm; to be, “when a seeming conflict arises between them,” i.e., between the words of Jesus and of the prophets. Nor will the word “seeming” suffice to justify the statement. Mr. W. illustrates his meaning by a reference to the ritual law. Now it is not a seeming but a real and most important difference which exists between the law and the gospel. The one appointed a place where Jehovah's name was to be put—a place to which certain acts of worship were to be rigidly restricted. The other records the blessed announcement by our Lord that all such restrictions were to be abolished—that neither at Jerusalem nor at Gerizim, distinctively, or exclusively, should men worship the Father. What could be more real than the difference between the precept, love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy, on the one hand; and, on the other, the injunctions by which our Lord replaced them, love your enemies; bless them that curse you, etc.? True, they were not given to the same people and at the same time. True, the divine lawgiver had unquestionable authority to repeal any of his own institutions, which for temporary uses he had established, replacing them by others of a widely different character. But that which we would have our readers to note is that, in the cases to which Mr. W. has thus referred, it was a question of really repealing one precept or injunction, and issuing others directly opposite. The repeal was real, the contrariety was real; and the only key to the consistency of the proceeding, is the supremacy of the lawgiver, whose title to fix the duration of any of his laws can be questioned by none. But neither can any one question the contrariety betweens the laws which are repealed and those which are ordained in their place. When, therefore, our author says, that “the case is not materially altered when it is the prophets who are seemingly at variance with Christ,” the Word “seemingly” is out of place. So far as Christ's relations to the prophets is illustrated by his relation to the law, it is not a seeming but a real variance which is indicated.

Nor do the next words by Mr. W. tend to weaken this impression. “For there are, unquestionably,” says he, “times in which the teaching of Christ appears, directly or by implication, to militate with the announcements of Old Testament prophecy, when at least those announcements are understood in their plain and literal sense.” This is a most serious statement and cannot be too strictly weighed. We are not left to appearances as regards the law. Distinctly and avowedly does our Lord again and again place his sayings in contrast with what had been said of old time. As distinctly does the Holy Ghost reveal, with regard to the whole Levitical economy, that it terminated at the cross. “Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross” (Col. 2:14). But where have we such announcements as to the prophets, or as to one single prediction which they were inspired to place on record? Our whole question is as to their predictions. We do not forget that, as belonging to the dispensation which commenced at Sinai, and expressing those relations with God which bore the impress of the Sinai covenant, the prophets are, by the Savior, connected with the law, in such passages as “The law and the prophets prophesied until John.” But it were a mere play upon words to confound such a use of the expression “the prophets” with the question at issue between Mr. W. and those whose views he assails. We repeat, that our whole question is as to the predictions of the future recorded by the prophets; and where, we ask, is the ground for Mr. W.'s assertion, “That the teaching of Christ,” either “directly or by implication,” appears to contradict these predictions? How can we suppose the existence of good ground for such an assertion? To revoke an edict is one thing; to recall a prediction is another. The former, when at least the edict is divine, only indicates that it had been temporary in its purpose, and, having done its work, is laid aside: the latter would imply some want of accuracy in the prediction, which subverts the idea of its being divine. For a typical observance to cease, when the antitypical event has transpired, is a matter of course; but for a prediction to need to be explained away, when events prove that the fulfillment does not exactly correspond with the terms in which it had been foretold, would be such a reflection on the prophet, as our author would be the last person in the world, willingly or knowingly, to make. No, we are ready by the grace of God to surrender all fantasies, however pleasant, as soon as they are proved to us by the Word of God to be such. But we are not prepared to surrender a jot or tittle of that Word, or to accept a principle which represents one part of it to be contradictory to another, however “figurative, mysterious, or obscure” either part may be judged to be.

That an element of truth is contained in both the propositions laid down by our author has been already admitted. Every one admits, that the plainer portions of any book are of service in elucidating those parts which are more obscure. But when the book in question is an inspired book, and admitted to be so in all its parts, it amounts to self-contradiction to represent one part as of higher authority than another. However we may be assisted by the plainer passages in learning the import of such as are more difficult, all are equal in authority, and equally demand the submission of the whole man to the voice of God, speaking to us as really in the most figurative and mysterious texts as in those which are most literal and clear. We have Scripture for the fact, that there are in some parts of the sacred volume “things hard to be understood.” God forbid that we should refuse the light shed thereon by the simpler statements of inspiration. If humbly to avail ourselves of aid and instruction thus graciously provided had been all to which our author exhorts us, we could only have bid him God speed in such a service. But “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable;” and we need to beware of principles which would supersede the necessity of patiently, prayerfully, humbly examining all that Scripture says.

Nor must we forget that, easy as it may seem to be, to give precedence to such passages as are “literal, dogmatic, and clear” over those which are “figurative, mysterious, and obscure,” it will not be found as easy in practice as it appears in theory. Who can furnish us with a list of each class of passages? Or, supposing it furnished, who can assure us of its accuracy? A judge, or an arbiter, requires credentials which are above dispute. Who then shall certify us of the number and identity of the passages which are said by Mr. W. to “constitute the one divinely appointed court of arbitration” in the millenarian controversy? Is there no such thing as the question with regard to which passages are literal and which figurative? Do not many which seem clear to some appear obscure to others? Is it not one prominent feature of the millenarian controversy, that passages which, on the one side are affirmed to be literal, are on the other side maintained to be figurative? Are all these to be excluded from “the court?” And is it to consist of none kit such as are admitted on both sides to be “literal, dogmatic, and clear?” If not—if we are first to be agreed upon the passages which claim a place as arbiters, and then to receive their judgment of the points under discussion, we shall find that we have been multiplying instead of reducing the number of controverted points, entangling and prolonging instead of clearing and shortening the debate.

On one item in the first proposition we have hesitated to remark. It contrasts “literal, dogmatic, and clear,” with “figurative, mysterious, and obscure.” Literal and figurative, clear and obscure, are contrasts sufficiently obvious and distinct: but is mysterious the opposite of dogmatic? Does not the latter word denote “pertaining to a dogma?” Is it not synonymous, or nearly so, with “doctrinal?” And is mystery the opposite of doctrine? But it is not to remark critically on this point, that we refer to it. The fear of seeming to lay any stress on this view of it made us hesitate to notice it at all. But in one passage already quoted from our author, he seems avowedly to maintain that doctrinal passages are to decide prophetic questions, and places all prophetic scriptures in contrast with doctrine. The statement is the more remarkable for being introduced by the following emphatic words. Having styled his first proposition a self-evident truth, he proceeds— “But mark its necessary consequence! Our present inquiries must be first directed to the strictly doctrinal portions of the sacred volume. For all the prophecies abound in metaphor and allegory.” This would be indeed a compendious mode of studying prophecy! Leave all the prophecies aside, and study the strictly doctrinal portions of the sacred volume! But here again, does that volume contain no doctrines as to the future? And what are doctrines as to the future but prophecies? Of two things one; “the strictly doctrinal portions” to which Mr. W. refers, bear on the future or they do not. If they do, they are prophecies, and “all the prophecies,” are not so figurative as he represents. If they do not, of what avail can it be to study them order to understand prophecy aright?

The fact of the matter is this: there is no such contrariety between one part of Scripture and another, as might be supposed from our author's representations.

Only in appearance are its statements ever in conflict with each other; and this appearance arises, not from Scripture itself, but from the state of our own minds. Scripture, from first to last, is one harmonious whole. Were any of us to understand it perfectly, the harmony of all its parts would be perfectly discerned. In proportion as the Holy Spirit does enable any to understand it, this harmony is perceived; but He alone can teach to profit and it is in the prayerful, diligent, humble perusal of Scripture itself—of all Scripture—in its perusal, moreover, as subject to it, and not as subjecting it to our own minds, that the teaching of the Holy Spirit is afforded. Of all moral preparatives for the study of prophecy, or of any branch of revealed truth, there is none so important as that we have just indicated—entire subjection to the Word of God. By it are all to be judged eventually; the Christian submits himself to it now. He may find statements in it on one subject, which he cannot, at the time, reconcile with what he understands its declarations on some other subject to be: but what is he to do? Is he to prefer the one class to the other, and having made his selection, subordinate those which he deems of lower, to such as he regards as of “higher authority?” Would that be to reverence God's Word, and submit to its authority? Surely not. The man who trembles at God's Word will, in such a case, reflect that the discrepancy is only apparent; that it may arise from his own misapprehension of either class of passages; or even that he may yet be ignorant of some collateral truths, which, when known, will clear up all. He concludes to confess his ignorance, and wait on God.

Take for instance, the millenarian controversy. Many there are to whom it seems written in numerous passages, that the second coming of Christ is to precede the millennium, and to introduce it; while our author, with many other excellent, godly men, maintains that this is contradicted by plain statements of the New Testament. They admit that many portions of the Old, and some parts of the New, seem to favor the premillennial doctrine; but they deem it inconsistent with what they judge to be the evident sense of certain literal passages of the latter volume of inspiration; and they contend that the Old Testament must yield to the New—the figurative and obscure to the literal and clear. But may we not well pause, ere we consent to this course, and inquire whether we be indeed shut up to such a necessity? Contradiction or discrepancy in God's Word there cannot be: the secret of the difficulty must be found elsewhere. May not our brethren have come to hasty conclusions as to the sense of what they term the literal passages? Is it not a presumptive evidence of their having done so, that the effect of their use of them is to place them in apparent opposition to what they admit to be the literal and obvious import of other Scriptures? Pre-millennialists make no admissions of the kind, nor have they any need to make such. The pre-millennial view does not set Scripture against Scripture, nor does it deem such a course admissible. Allowed, even by its opposers, to harmonize with the obvious sense of many Scriptures, it claims the support of all—yea, of the very passages adduced against it, when these passages are rightly understood. And is there to be no question allowed as to the sense of these? Is it by the passages themselves, or by post-millenarian deductions there from, that the pre-millennial testimony lying on the surface of so many other passages is said to be contradicted and overruled? And may we not inquire whether such deductions be fair and well. founded? whether they be compatible with the passages themselves, and with other passages equally literal and clear? There can be no refusing or evading such inquiries; and when instituted in a calm and impartial spirit, and conducted with humility, patience, and prayer, we have no fear for the result. It has hitherto generally issued in a firm and abiding conviction, that pre-millennial views are as much taught by the literal as by the figurative portions of Holy Writ; that they are, in short, the doctrines of scripture throughout: and that the only way to avoid receiving them, if serious attention be at all paid to them, is—first, to attach an erroneous meaning to certain passages, and then, to subordinate all others, not to these passages themselves, but to the human and mistaken sense in which they are understood. W. T.

Review of Waldegrave: 2. Distinctions Between the Old and New Testaments

IN turning to Mr. Waldegrave's second proposition, that “in all points upon which the New Testament gives us instruction, it is, as containing the full, the clear, and the final manifestation of the divine will, our rightful guide to the interpretation of the Old,” we wish particularly to guard against being misunderstood. There is much of truth contained in it, beyond all doubt; but all the force that it can justly exert on any Christian mind is the result of what we acknowledge as cheerfully as our author himself. There are distinctions between the Old Testament and the New, which no Christian can fail to recognize. The authority is the same in both; for both are the word of God. The grand central object is the same; for both testify of Christ. “The law, the prophets, and the psalms,” as well as the Gospels, the Epistles, and the Apocalypse, have hint for their glorious, never-failing theme. But how differently is he presented in these two grand departments of divine revelation! The difference is felt even by those who would be at a loss to define its nature and explain its cause. Much that Mr. W. says on this point is so self-evident, that our only wonder is that he should have thought it needful to say it at all, At the same time he is far from having succeeded, as it appears to us, in illustrating the most important aspects of his subject; and the arguments he has advanced seem anything but conclusive, in favor of the principle of interpretation for which he contends.

It is not so obvious as Mr. W. would intimate (page 15), that in New Testament revelations as to the future, “figure is the exception, literality the rule.” That this may be the fact as to the whole volume, we do not dispute; but in regard to its prophetic passages, which can alone decide prophetic questions, the statement is far from being undisputable. The numerous parables by which our Lord conveyed prophetic instruction to his hearers, as well as other obvious considerations, will at once occur to our readers. But as this is not the basis on which Mr. W. rests his defense of the principle in question, we would not bestow upon it a more extended notice than he gives to it himself. His great argument we give in his own words: — “The New Testament has this distinct and incontestable claim to the right of arbitration, that it is the inspired record of the words of that Great Prophet, of whom it was said, 'him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you’” p. 15.

In illustration and support of his argument, Mr. W. expounds the passage in Peter's discourse, from which these words are quoted. He explains that Jesus is the Prophet of whom Moses wrote and Peter spake. He refers to the gospels, as containing much that this great Prophet taught, but contends that the Acts and Epistles may with equal truth be regarded as ids oracular communications. He shows that by these the previously “imperfect revelation of the Divine will” is completed (many things being thus revealed, which were hidden before); and that the New Testament is not only supplementary to the Old, but often expository of its contents. He proves that, in certain cases Old Testament institutions are abrogated by Christ in the New Testament; and from the whole he infers, that on prophetic subjects the literal portions of the New Testament are of greater weight, and entitled to more consideration, than the predictions of the older volume of inspiration.

To the argument drawn from the setting aside of Levitical rites, and the passing away of typical ceremonies, we have already replied; showing, at the same time, how seriously our author's reasoning arrays Scripture against Scripture, and exalts one part of it at the expense of another. Nor do the particulars now enumerated require much remark. It may well be questioned whether the fulfillment of the Jewish lawgiver's prediction in our blessed Lord, as declared by Peter in the third of Acts, constitutes the highest feature of the distinctive character possessed by the New Testament. Questions might be raised as to the meaning of the word “prophet” in the text on which Mr. W.'s discourse is founded. Isaiah the foretelling of future events that which is chiefly indicated by that term as applied by Moses to himself, and to that blessed One whose advent he predicts Isaiah it not rather as the founder, by divine appointment, of the legal economy or dispensation that he speaks of himself, while he foretells the coming of another, by whom a better dispensation should be established? Moses and the law were to be heard, till Christ should come, and the gospel be introduced; or, as the evangelist has it, “The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). In either case, it would seem rather to be the divine authority of the lawgiver than the supernatural foresight of the seer, that is indicated by the word prophet, as used in the text under consideration.

Nor do the words— “him shall ye hear in all things” — imply that his revelations are more strictly true than were those made by means of Moses. The One of whom the passage treats was to be “a prophet,” says Moses, “like unto me.” The authority of Moses, as their divinely appointed legislator and the founder of their system, was acknowledged by the Jews; but he himself foretold the coming of another of equal (he does not say higher) authority; and him they were to hear in all things. Moses himself thus sets his seal to the mission of Christ, by which his own temporary economy was to be superseded and replaced; but until thus superseded and replaced, Moses was to be heard, and his injunctions to be obeyed as implicitly as Christ and his words are now to be submitted to by all. In fact, we have Christ's own declaration to assure us, that such as truly heard the one, reverently and obediently listened to the other also. “For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me.” (John 5:46.)

In a word, neither Moses nor Peter lay down a canon of interpretation in the passage on which our author builds so much. The question in Deut. 18, and in Acts 3, is not whether the Old Testament or the New is to be preferred as fixing the sense of a disputed passage, but, whether Jesus was to be received as the Messiah. “No,” said the Jews, “we know that God spake by Moses, and we will cleave to Moses.” “Moses himself commands you to receive Jesus,” was Peter's reply! A cogent reply it was, worthy of the Holy Ghost, under whose inspiration it was made. But to infer from it, that the meaning of Old Testament prophecies is to be authoritatively determined by a few passages of the New Testament, deemed literal and clear by those who make such a use of them, would be to fix upon it a sense which, we are bold to maintain, the apostle never contemplated; it would be to draw from it a deduction, as contrary to the passage itself rightly understood, as it is derogatory to the book of inspiration as a whole.

We shall have occasion to return to this chapter in the Acts, but would now invite the attention of the Christian reader to the whole subject of the connection between the Old and New Testaments. It is one of profoundest interest in itself; while its bearings on the millenarian question are quite as important as our esteemed author represents them to be. The reader himself must judge, whether the path, to which Mr. W. invites us, be one in which the brighter lights of the later revelations become really available for the elucidation of those, which are more obscure in character, and of more ancient date.

That which, first of all, distinguishes the New Testament, is the record it contains of the perfect revelation of God himself, in the person of his Son. Viewed as an inspired writing, its authority cannot be greater than that of the equally inspired writings of the Old Testament. But as to its subject—that which it presents to us, we no sooner open it, and begin to read, than we find ourselves in the presence of God himself. “God was manifested in the flesh.” It is God who speaks in the Old Testament as really as in the New. But in the one, he is in the distance, or causing his voice to be heard from amid the thick darkness in which He dwells; in the other, “Emmanuel” — “God with us” —is the wonder which bursts upon us in the first chapter of the book. “Verily, thou art a God that hidest thyself” (Isa. 14:15) is the utterance even of the evangelical prophet, as he is often termed. “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him,” is what the evangelist affirms, (John 1:18); and it is this which stamps its character on the New Testament throughout. God himself is revealed in the person of Christ. No doubt he was the prophet like unto Moses, whose coming Moses had foretold. But while Moses was “faithful in all his house, as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after,” Christ was as “a Son over his own house.” He was “counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as he who hath builded the house hath more honor than the house.” And while “every house is builded by some one, he that built all things (which Christ did) is God,” (Heb. 3)The true, distinctive glory of the New Testament shines upon us in the fact, that “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son.” Nor is even this the whole. Not only was he, as a messenger, thus pre-eminently glorious; he was himself the glory of the message. God was revealed not only by but in him, who was “the brightness of his glory, the express image of his person.” “The Word was made flesh,” says the evangelist, “and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” “He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father,” was the language of this blessed One Himself. The Old Testament contains nothing resembling this. The will of God is there partially disclosed; his creating power and providential wisdom are exhibited; his government of Israel and the nations is copiously treated of; man's dreary history is largely recorded; the grace of God to individuals is placed in striking relief, while testimony is borne to their faith, and its precious fruits; Christ himself is foreshadowed and foretold, from the pronouncing of the curse on the serpent, and the first institution of slain sacrifices, in Gen. 3 and 4, to the last of the long line of Israel's prophets, and the re-establishment of Levitical rites, on the return from Babylon, in Ezra's and Nehemiah's day. But God himself was not revealed. “The Lord hath said that he would dwell in the thick darkness,” is Solomon's thought of God, in erecting for him the temple in which he deigned to take up his abode. But there, as in the tabernacle which had preceded it, everything testified of the barriers which sin had raised between God and his people, and of the distance and reserve which marked the relations existing between him and them. Foreshadowings there were of the Savior, in whose coming this reserve was to be laid aside, and by whose sacrifice this distance was to be destroyed. But it is in the New Testament that we find ourselves actually in the presence of Jesus, who, while a man and the lowliest of men, was yet the full revelation, the perfect display of all that God is, in his wisdom, power, holiness, and love. All this was manifested in him, moreover, in perfect grace to the sinner. With wisdom, which confounded his adversaries by a word—power, which controlled the elements, and to which devils themselves were subject—holiness, so absolute and intrinsic, that contact with man's evil could not defile him, his love and grace were such, that a poor sinful Samaritan woman could freely converse with him, while he revealed himself to her as the Savior, and his Father as the One who sought such as she, to worship him in spirit and in truth! God, fully revealed in grace in the person of his Son, is that which constitutes the inexpressible charm with which the New Testament is invested, to all who have been convinced of the reality of their lost estate as sinners against God. “The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men.” “The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost!”

Another distinctive feature of the New Testament is the record it contains of the accomplishment of redemption by the cross. In Old Testament times, it was not only that God was not fully revealed, but that man had little or no access to him. True, he deigned to fix his earthly abode in the midst of his people Israel, and to speak of himself as dwelling “between the cherubims.” But who could venture to approach him there? One man only, and he but once a year, and even then it was with blood newly shed, and amid clouds of incense covering the mercy-seat lest he should die. These were the types of that sacrifice by which guilty man was to draw near to God; but so long as the types continued, “the way into the holiest was not yet made manifest.” Christ only could open the way. To accomplish this he had not only to reveal God to man, but had to present himself a sacrifice on man's behalf to God. The whole nature and character of God had to be manifested and glorified with regard to sin, in order for any of our sinful race to be admitted to his immediate presence. Sin had to be put away. The believer well knows by whom this has been accomplished. One only was equal to the mighty undertaking; but by him it has been once and forever achieved. He “put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” At his expiring cry, “It is finished,” “the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.” No veil remains between God and the sinner who approaches in the name of Jesus. “Boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say his flesh,” is now the assured, indubitable privilege of every true believer. But where, save in the New Testament, is this made known to us? And what more real distinction can exist between the Old Testament and the New, than the one we are now considering? Many prophets and righteous men had desired to see and hear what the disciples saw and heard when Jesus was on earth. How would they have rejoiced, had they been permitted, as we are, to read of the exaltation of the risen Jesus to the right hand of God—of free remission through his blood—and of access through him, without a single interposing veil, to the immediate presence of God himself! Yet such are some of the wonders which the New Testament distinctively unfolds.

But there is one characteristic feature of the later volume of inspiration—a most important one—on which Mr. W.., in his opening lecture, bestows the slightest possible notice. He does indeed say (page 23) “that there are many things which Moses and the prophets—even if they knew them—did not commit to writing,” and acids, that “Jesus, however, has perfected the volume of inspiration.” But it is not thus slightly that the New Testament itself treats of one grand department of truth, the primary and exclusive revelation of which it claims as its own. The divine glory of Messiah's person, and the wondrous efficacy of his atoning death, had been variously typified and foretold in the Old Testament; and that which, as to these verities, distinguishes the New Testament, is that it records what the other only foreshadows and predicts. But as to one vast range of truth, we have the distinct announcement in the New Testament, that it had been in all previous ages unknown and unrevealed. Hear the Apostle, who, writing to the Ephesians, “of the dispensation of the grace of God,” which had been given him to them-ward, says, “How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery: (as I wrote afore in few words, whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ); which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit” (Eph. 3:2-5). Again, he describes the objects of his vocation to be “to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ” (verse 9). Writing to the Colossians, the same apostle speaks of Christ's body, “which is the church; whereof,” he says, “I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfill (or fully to preach, see margin) the Word of God; even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to the saints: to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you the hope of glory” Col. 1:21-27. In these passages, we have the distinct mention of a certain mystery of Christ, which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, which from the beginning of the world had been hid in God, which had been hid from ages and from generations, and was only now made manifest to the saints. Of this previously unrevealed mystery it is said, that by revelation it had been made known to Paul; and that Christ had now revealed it to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. The knowledge of this mystery Paul represents as the dispensation of the grace of God which had been given him, in order that he might make all men see what is the fellowship of this mystery; he speaks of the saints as those to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery; and he declares that he had been made a minister according to the dispensation of God, committed to him for the completing of the word of God. Such we take to be the force of the expression “to fulfill,” or “fully to preach the word of God.” Evidently that word was incomplete till this mystery was made known.

We have no intention, in the present paper, to consider the subject of this mystery, as it is developed in detail in the two epistles from which the above quotations are made. The proper place for considering it at large may be, when we come to discuss our author's statements on the subject in one of his subsequent lectures. For the present, let it suffice to refer to the passages themselves, and to one verse in Eph. 3, not yet quoted, which prove, that the heavenly unity of the church with Christ by virtue of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost is the mystery of which the Apostle writes. These are the words in which he himself defines it: “That the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel.” (Eph. 3:6.) “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” are the terms in which he sums up this mystery in Col. 1; but then he declares that it is “among the Gentiles” that “the riches of the glory of this mystery” have their scope and their development, Now nothing can be more obvious, even to a cursory reader of God's word, than that the Old Testament abounds with predictions of blessing to the Gentiles under Messiah's reign. Our post-millenarian brethren will, at all events, admit this. It was no unrevealed mystery that, when the Seed should come to whom the promises were made, both Jews and Gentiles should be blessed under him, and by him. But that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the seine body—that believing Jews and believing Gentiles should be incorporated in one, being brought thus into a position of perfect equality with each other, by both, and both alike, becoming the body of Christ; that there should be thus a community or corporation of persons, not only blessed under Christ and by Christ, but blessed in him and with him, “quickened together,” “raised up together,” and “made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ,” as the epistle to the Ephesians declares; that Christ should be in such, the hope of glory—this is, indeed, what had been hid in God from all former ages and generations, and what was only revealed to the apostles and prophets of the new economy, since the exaltation of Christ to the right hand of God, and the descent of the Holy Ghost from heaven.

The importance of this subject, in its bearing on the millenarian question, can scarcely be over-rated. Let it be once assumed that the subject of the prophecies is identical with that of the epistles—that the latter contain nothing but what was more obscurely revealed in the former—and the consequence is inevitable. The prophecies are spiritualized in order to raise them towards the level of the epistles; the epistles are brought down to the level of the spiritual sense put upon the prophecies; and each department of divine truth is thus shorn of its peculiar, distinctive character. The church of God, indwelt by the Holy Ghost and thus made “one body” and “one Spirit” with its risen and glorified Head in heaven, is confounded in men's thoughts with the whole company of the redeemed from the beginning to the end of time. All its peculiar blessedness as one with Christ, whether in his present rejection, or in the glory in which he is by and by to be revealed, is reduced to what is common to saints of every dispensation. Old Testament predictions, concerning such as are to be blessed under Christ and by Christ, are regarded in the spiritual sense sought to be imposed upon them, as expressive of the portion which pertains to those, and those only, who are blessed in him and with him, “members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.” This is a theme which we cannot at present pursue; but here is to be found, we are fully persuaded, the fundamental error of the Bampton lecturer, and of nearly, if not quite, all who reject premillennial views. We hope, hereafter, to give the subject the fullest examination in the light of God's word. We turn from it now, to point out some other considerations connected with the distinction between the Old Testament and the New.

The three great characteristics of the New Testament we have seen to be, that God is there made known as fully revealed in Christ; accomplished redemption is there proclaimed, with all its blessed results; and there we have the unfolding of the previously unrevealed mystery of the heavenly unity of the church with Christ, by virtue of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. Two results naturally ensue, and may be seen to pervade the volume. First the subjects with which it prominently and distinctively deals are not such as relate to God's government of creation, Israel, and the nations, with which the Old Testament is so largely occupied; but the more vital and momentous questions of eternity, the soul, life, death, heaven and hell. We are far from intending that the Old Testament says nothing of the latter class of subjects, or that the New Testament is silent on the former. It is with the general features—the predominant character of both volumes, that we are at present concerned; and who can doubt that eternity is stamped upon the one, as prominently as time is impressed upon the other? Now it is to God's government of the world that prophecy applies; and hence the extent to which the Old Testament consists of prophecy. In proportion as the subject is touched upon in the New Testament, it becomes prophetic; but even in its prophetic parts (as Matt. 13, and 24, 25; 2 Thess. 2; and the Apocalypse as a whole), eternity is connected with what takes place in time, in a way but little known in the Old Testament. Then, secondly, the distinction between Jew and Gentile, so maintained in the older volume of God's word, begins in the latter one to fade away before the glory of Jesus, the incarnate Son of God; it disappears before his cross, by which the middle wall of partition is broken down; and one essential feature of “the mystery,” revealed by the Holy Ghost come down from heaven, is this, that in a risen and ascended Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, Barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free. Not that these distinctions have finally ceased in the world, viewed as the subject of God's government. So far from this, “Jews,” “Gentiles,” and “the Church of God” form the present triple distribution of mankind, in an apostolic precept enjoining upon believers an inoffensive course towards all the three. (1 Cor. 10:32.) It is in the church, the body of Christ, that these, and all mere human distinctions, have passed away. “Male and female,” as really as “Jew and Gentile,” is an unknown, unrecognized distinction, in regard to the oneness of believers with an earth-rejected, heavenly Christ. (Gal. 3:28).

The connections between the Old Testament and the New we reserve as the subject of our next communication.

Review of Waldegrave: 3. Connections Between the Old and New Testaments

Our attention was directed, in our last, to the distinctions which exist between the two departments of divine revelation. We found them to be, in some respects, wider and more important than would be gathered from Mr. W.'s opening lecture; besides differing in character from those on which he there so much insists, and, indeed, from any recognized by him in any part of his volume. We must not suppose however, that the change from the old order of things to the new, was immediate; or, that as soon as we open the New Testament, Christianity, in its distinctive and full-grown character, will burst upon our attention. Some of its grand elements are there from the very beginning; but they present themselves along with much that pertains to the former economy; much that has since passed away. The fact is, that the four gospels (and, in a certain modified sense, even the Acts of the Apostles) describe a transitional state of things, as distinct in some of its features from the Christianity which it introduced, as, in others, from the Judaism which it succeeded and gradually set aside. While, therefore, we doubt not for a moment, that it is in the New Testament God's present testimony is found—that by which he immediately addresses our souls, whether as sinners or as saints; and while it is therefore most important that the Old Testament should be read in the light cast back upon it by the New; it is equally indisputable, that many things in the New Testament can only be understood through previous acquaintance with the Old. To know ourselves as ruined and undone, and to know Christ crucified and risen as our only Savior, is to have everlasting life: and this knowledge God can, by his Spirit, communicate by means of any portion either of the Old Testament or the New. But if, knowing that the great question of eternity has been settled for us, by the sovereign grace which has blotted out our sins, and accepted us in the Beloved, we are desirous of full acquaintance with our Father's mind and will, as revealed in his word, we may not neglect either the Old Testament or the New. They are mutually illustrative of each other's contents, and neither can be neglected without serious loss. God may now usually begin his work in individual souls by means of truth revealed in the New Testament; but it is with Genesis that he begins the book of inspiration; and if we are, through his aid and teaching, to understand it as a whole, it is there our researches must commence. Should we reverse this order, and begin with the New Testament, we should continually meet with words, statements, and allusions which the Old Testament alone could explain. Let it be supposed that some one to whom both volumes are unknown, should open the New Testament and begin to read, “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” “Who was David?” and “who was Abraham?” are questions which must instantly arise. Where could the answer be found, except in the Old Testament? Nor is there a verse down to the seventeenth, by which similar inquiries would not be aroused-inquiries which must receive their answer, if answered at all, from the same source. Passing over some verses, on which nevertheless, we might make similar remarks, what could be known of the import of verse 21, had the Old Testament no existence? “He shall save his people from their sins.” What people? And, why “his” people? What is the nature of the relations subsisting between him and them? What has been their conduct in these relations? Whence their need of being saved? And what are we to understand by the salvation he is to bestow? These are all questions naturally suggested by the words; and if some of them must find their answer in the continued perusal of the book itself, how many of them can only be solved by reference to more ancient records of equally divine authority? A direct quotation from these records is what immediately follows: Isaiah's prediction of Emmanuel, the Virgin's son, was to find its accomplishment in the birth of Jesus. But, enough. We might take any other chapter of Matthew's narrative, and almost any chapter of the narratives by the other three evangelists, and we should find ourselves as continually thrown back upon the law, the prophets, and the psalms, for the import of quotations or allusions which would meet us at every step.

We have referred to the transition from Judaism to Christianity, as having gradually taken place. Of this fact, the New Testament itself affords abundant evidence. Were this evidence to be carefully examined, other facts would be educed—facts overlooked by Mr. W. and by those generally with whom he symbolizes, but which have a most direct and important bearing on the questions at issue. In the introduction to his Epistle to the Romans, Paul speaks of our Lord Jesus Christ under two distinct aspects: as “made of the seed of David according to the flesh,” and “declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.” (Rom. 1:3, 4.) As “made of the seed of David according to the flesh” he had special links of connection with Israel. Where the apostle is enumerating Israel's distinctive privileges, such as the adoption, the glory, &c., that by which he crowns the catalog is, “and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever.” (Rom. 9:5.) It is from the same apostle's pen that we have the words, “Now I say that Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers.” (Rom. 15:8.) “Made of a woman, made under the law.” (Gal. 4:4.) Let anyone read the gospels in the light of these apostolic statements, and how evident it must be to him, that innumerable links with Israel and Judaism, having no place in Christianity as existing in Paul's day, were maintained by our blessed Lord during his sojourn on earth. Circumcised the eighth day, and duly presented by his mother according to the law, he afterward accompanied her and Joseph to the annual feasts in the city of solemnities. It was in the synagogue that he commenced his ministry at Nazareth, and often is it noticed afterward that he taught in their synagogues. How frequently were those whom he healed or cleansed directed by him to go and show themselves to the priests; and how did he charge the twelve not to go into the way of the Gentiles, or enter any city of the Samaritans, but to go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. “The Scribes and the Pharisees,” said be, “sit in Moses' seat: all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do.” (Matt. 23:2, 3.) It was on the night of the passover, and after he had faithfully observed it with his disciples, that he was betrayed into the hands of men.

How different is all this from the Christianity of the epistles, and, in many respects, from what we find in the Acts of the Apostles. No doubt there were other elements, new, heavenly, and divine, from the very beginning of the gospels. Christ was there, the Son of the Father, the image of the invisible God; and wherever this full divine glory of his person peculiarly stands forth, the limits of Judaism and of his dispensational links with Israel were not sufficient to restrain the outflow to sinners, whether Gentile or Samaritan, of that grace, to introduce and exercise which “God was manifest in the flesh.” Most true is this, and most blessed. But it nullifies in no degree the fact, of which we have seen such ample proof, that, throughout his continuance on earth, the Savior deigned to maintain many a link with the nation of the Jews, and with the economy under which they had been placed.

Why were these national and dispensational links maintained by our blessed Lord? A profoundly interesting question, to which, happily, his own words afford an explicit reply. They place it beyond doubt, that as one part of an extensive tract of land might be selected and enclosed, as a specimen of the whole, for the purpose of testing its fruitfulness by actual experiment, so the nation of Israel was chosen of God for the purpose of testing whether man, favored with every advantage of even divine care and culture, would bring forth fruit towards God. Isaiah had long before sung of Jehovah's vineyard in a very fruitful hill, fenced, and planted with the choicest vine; the stones gathered out, a tower built in its midst, and a wine press made therein. Touching this vineyard, (which the prophet declared to be the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant), it had been asked, “What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes!” (Isa. 5:4.) Because of such strange results of so much diligent, unwearied culture, judgment had been pronounced in Isaiah's day, and the execution of it had been long impending, when the Lord Jesus Christ appeared. The trial was not complete till then. “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloak for their sin.” (John 15:22.) A vineyard let out to husbandmen is the figure employed by our Lord, to set forth their privileges and responsibilities, and to describe their guilt. (Matt. 21:33, &c.) It is not, as in Isa. 5, the fertility of the vineyard that is in question, but the honesty of the husbandmen, and the consequent productiveness to their Lord, and of the grounds entrusted to their care. “When the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits.” Thus had the prophets been sent to Israel. With what result? “The husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another.” Thus had Israel dealt with the prophets who had been sent to them. But great is the divine longsuffering. The owner of the vineyard had patience with the husbandmen, and “sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them likewise.” Was there no hope remaining? Could no further means be tried? Yes: “last of all, he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son.” Such, therefore, is one aspect in which the mission of Jesus is to be viewed. No doubt he came to reveal the Father, and to accomplish redemption by the sacrifice of himself; but he also came seeking fruit on God's behalf from those who were responsible for rendering it. Before he became the sacrifice for human guilt upon the cross, he was presented as the final test of man's condition before God. Israel was the theater in which the experiment was made: but it was human nature itself-man, as such-that was put to the test. With God in the distance, or behind the veil, man had, with every lesser advantage of laws, messengers, prophecies, warnings, promises, made no return to God for the pains bestowed: would he, now that God was revealed in the person of his Son, be more submissive or obedient? Alas! “when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir: come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him.” The last astounding proof of God's forbearing love, of patience which nothing yet had sufficed to exhaust, drew forth from man—from Israel—the expression of intense and complete hatred. They cast him out of the vineyard and slew him!

The application of this parable was left by the Savior to the Jews themselves. He asks them what might be expected to be done by the lord of the vineyard to those husbandmen, and they are obliged to reply, “He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto others.” He then reminds them of the Stone rejected by the builders, and of its high destiny to be the Head of the corner, and adds, “Therefore say I unto you, the kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.”

But it was not only as the representative of God's claims—as seeking fruit—that the Jews rejected their Messiah: it was also as the revealer and expression of God's perfect grace. A certain king makes a marriage for his son, and sends his servants to call the invited guests—such as were bidden: “but they would not come” (Matt. 22:1-14). Nothing is claimed of the guests at a marriage feast; everything is provided; and the guests partake freely of the bounty of their host. But the grace which this provides all for man, and makes him welcome to the whole, is as unwelcome to his heart as those righteous claims of God's holy law, with which he refuses to comply. “They would not come.” But what cannot grace do? The death of Christ is itself made the ground of new invitations! “Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are now ready: come unto the marriage.” What can be represented here, but the ministry of the apostles to Israel after the death and resurrection of their Lord? Alas! it was with the same result; save where sovereign grace imparted a new life, and thus subdued the opposition of man's will, these further invitations met with no better reception than the former. “They made light of it.... and the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully and slew them.” It was for this rejection of the gospel of an ascended Christ, proclaimed by the Holy Ghost come down from heaven, that judgment was executed on Jerusalem and the Jews. “But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.” Nor was it till they had thus rejected mercy, offered to them in every form, and pressed on their acceptance in every way, that the proclamation of heavenly mercy went forth universally: all being now indiscriminately bidden to the feast. “Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage.”

If we turn now to the early chapters of the Acts, from which Mr. W. extracts the passage on which his opening discourse is founded, we shall find that what they present is this lingering of divine mercy over Israel, before the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles. They had indeed committed an unparalleled crime in the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus, and in a certain sense filled up the measure of their iniquity. But the vinedresser had interceded for the barren fig-tree (Luke 13:8). Jesus, on the cross, had cried, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do:” this, their ignorance, thus pleaded by the Redeemer on the cross, is precisely what the Holy Ghost admits by Peter ensued was arranged of God accordingly. But if Jesus himself, looking down upon Jerusalem, and weeping over it, could say, “If thou hadst known, even thou at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace!” we need not, in the unchangeableness of God's purposes, find any difficulty as to vast and wondrous results depending on Israel's repentance, as taught in Acts 3, even though it was surely foreknown of God that they would persist in their sin, and that wrath would come upon them to the uttermost. We may well understand, that what was long afterward said by Paul to the Jews of a certain locality was true of the whole nation: “It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.” (Acts 13:46). The martyrdom of Stephen terminated for the present all hopes of Jerusalem's repentance, or of Israel's in Acts 3:17; “And now, brethren, I wot that reception of the Lord whom they had crucified; and through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers.” So far were they, in answer to the intercession of Jesus, conditionally forgiven, that instead of judgment being instantly executed, full, free, absolute forgiveness was proclaimed to them on condition of their repentance. Observe too, that it is national forgiveness of which the apostle treats, and the restoration of their forfeited national blessings, even including the return of Jesus himself. “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that (see the Greek) the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord: and he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you, whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God path spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.” Forgiveness of sins, and the times of refreshing, or restitution, of which all the prophets had witnessed, as well as the return of the Lord they had rejected, are here proposed to the Jews on condition of their repentance. This was the only condition on which Old Testament prophecy had suspended the arrival of these bright and happy days for Israel; and on this condition they are still held out by the apostle. “Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.” He well knew that they who had rejected and crucified a humbled Messiah on earth, would still reject the Holy Ghost's testimony to an ascended and returning Christ; and everything which seeing that every Old Testament prediction of the kingdom (or the millennium) treated of its establishment as dependent on Israel's conversion, that also was indefinitely postponed. And thus was the way prepared for the revelation of the mystery, till then necessarily concealed, that the period of Christ's rejection by Israel and the earth should be occupied in the calling and formation by the Holy Ghost of “the Church” —the elect body or bride of Christ—to be the vessel of his sympathies and sharer of his rejection while he sits on the Father's throne on high; and also to be the sharer of his glory when he shall “take to him his great power, and reign” upon the earth.

But is Israel cast off hopelessly and forever? Is there to be no fulfillment of those bright visions of rest, and blessedness, and supremacy on earth, under Messiah's sway and Jehovah's smile, with which the Old Testament abounds? Is it anywhere declared by our Lord himself, or by his apostles after him, that these predictions are never, in their plain and obvious sense, to be fulfilled? that they are to receive no accomplishment but that which is alleged to consist in the amalgamation of any converted Israelites with the church of the present dispensation Such is the doctrine of the Bampton Lecturer: and such, with more or less of consistency, is the doctrine of the reviewers, Mr. Lyon, and all the modern rejecters of millenarianism. They all deny that Israel is to have any national distinction or pre-eminent place in days to came. Some admit that the Jews may be restored to their own land; others deny this, as savoring of the worst features of millenarian literality; while some, of whom Mr. Waldegrave is one, treat it as a doubtful, uncertain matter: but all agree in denouncing the expectation of any real fulfillment of those national hopes for Israel, of which Old Testament language, if at all literally understood, constitutes so plain a warrant. “Christ,” say they, “discountenances such hopes, and the apostles forbid them.” But is this the case? Does the New Testament bear out these bold, confident, and oft-repeated assertions? We believe not. We believe that the New Testament needs only to be candidly, prayerfully, and diligently studied, in its evident and inseparable connection with the Old, to satisfy any Christian inquirer, that these assertions are not only baseless, but contrary to what the New Testament distinctly declares.

First, be it remembered, that the Old Testament itself predicts, in several passages, that for a long season Israel would remain in unbelief; while judicial blindness, rejection by Jehovah, scattering among the nations, and abject misery under the Gentile yoke, should be the result of their sins, and of their having rejected their Messiah. See, among other passages, Isa. 6:9-12; 1:1, 2,; 53:1-3; 63:17; 64:7; Hos. 1:6-9; 3:4; 5:14, 15; Mic. 3:9-12; 5:1. But, secondly, all these prophecies and numbers more show decisively that Israel's rejection and unbelief are but for a time, however prolonged; and that this dreary period is to be succeeded by the days of promised blessedness and rest. Thirdly, our Lord and his apostles distinctly recognize both these truths. Without doubt they declare, and that most unequivocally, that the Israel of that day were sealing on themselves the calamities by which they had been already overtaken, and bringing upon themselves and their children still heavier judgments than any which had yet been inflicted. Nor do they fail to portray the blessings to the Gentiles which result from the way in which divine mercy has overruled the sin of the Jews and their consequent rejection for a time. But do they anywhere intimate that this rejection is final and irreversible? Do they anywhere teach that the present Gentile dispensation has permanently and unchangeably replaced God's natural relations with the earthly people of his choice? Far from it—as far as possible. In Matt. 23—the sequel, in fact, to the series of parables which have been already considered, and in which our Lord had told the Jews that the kingdom of God was taken from them and given to others—after pronouncing upon them the dire and oft-repeated woe which their evil and hypocrisy drew forth from those blessed lips; after declaring that on them should come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, lamenting over them in such pathetic language, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered your children together, and ye would not!” after declaring, as he crossed the temple's threshold, “Behold your house is left unto you desolate” does he not add, as though he would not leave them utterly hopeless, “Ye shall not see me henceforth, TILL YE SHALL SAY, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord"? Can we suppose the Savior to have used these as his parting words, if he knew that they would never nationally welcome him, and never see him again, till, as individuals, in common with the whole human race, they behold him on the great white throne? Could words more clearly intimate, that however they might be in the act of rejecting him, the days would come when they would welcome him with all their hearts? that however certain—sadly, sorrowfully certain—that till then they should not behold him, yet that then, made “willing in the day of his power,” they should see him again, and see him to their joy? “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord,” were words well known to Jewish ears. They form a part of that magnificent Psalm (118) which was well understood to be an inspired, prophetic utterance, prepared beforehand as Messiah's welcome to the throne. These very words had been but a short time before uttered by the disciples and the multitudes on the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. Had they been sincerely used—used, moreover, not only by those who did chant them forth, but by the heads of the nation, and by the nation itself as a whole—then, what might not have occurred? In that case they would have known the day of their visitation, and everything must have been changed. Alas! they know it not. The fervor of the multitudes was rebuked by the Pharisees; and on the part of the nation as a whole, the cry was ready to be uttered, “Away with him! Crucify him!” It behooved Christ to suffer, “and enter into his glory.” “The stone” was to be first “rejected of the builders;” but where was the prediction of this fact recorded? In the very psalm quoted by our Lord when he said, “Ye shall not see me henceforth till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” Thus does he at once interpret and endorse Old Testament prophecy, linking together in his farewell words to Israel their future national reception of him as their Messiah, his return to them at that time from heaven (where, as the rejected Stone, he is at present exalted), and their own celebration, in that day, of his triumphs and their deliverance in language prepared for them by the sweet singer of Israel. Read Psa. 118 in the light thus shed upon it by our Lord's words; read it, as the joyful, adoring utterance of the penitent, pardoned, delivered Israel of the latter day, when they see their long-rejected, but now welcome Messiah, and say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; read it thus, we say, and every line, every word is pregnant with meaning, and redolent with joy. Set aside Israel's hopes, and the attestation of them by our Lord in the moment of Israel's deepest guilt and degradation, and how unmeaning the Psalm becomes!

If we turn, moreover, to the testimony of the apostles, we shall find it confirmatory, not condemnatory, of Israel's hopes. Take, for instance, Rom. 11. The chapter opens with the inquiry, “Hath God cast away his people?” to which the emphatic and almost indignant reply is at once subjoined, “God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew.” “Ah,” says our author, and many others of his school, “it is the elect—the Israel of God—of whom the apostle speaks.” This is Mr. W.'s grand solution of almost every difficulty which arises to his theory of interpretation. But what question was there among those to whom the apostle wrote, as to whether God had cast off the souls of his elect? Had God utterly and forever cast off his people Israel—the literal, natural Israel? was a question naturally arising out of all that the apostle had been teaching; and it was one of deepest interest to his brethren according to the flesh. No doubt he mentions an election from among them— “a remnant according to the election of grace.” But this remnant is not his subject in the chapter before us; he only refers to its existence as one argument among many, by which he proves that Israel—the nation Israel—is not utterly and forever rejected of God. It is thus that he distributes his theme. Not utterly, seeing (1) that he himself is an Israelite; (2) that in the worst days of the nation's previous history, such as those of Elias, God had a remnant; and (3) that “even so at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace.” He thus proves the first part of his proposition, that it is only to part of Israel that blindness hath happened, not to the whole. But is the blindness to be permanent, even to the extent in which it does exist? No. “Blindness in part is happened to Israel,” not forever, but “until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in, and so all Israel shall be saved.” Mr. W. has the boldness to suggest whether the word “Israel” in one part of this quotation may not be understood literally, and in the other figuratively! whether “all Israel” and “the fullness of the Gentiles” be not one and the same body of men! Could temerity itself go farther than this in dislocating and confounding the statements of God's holy Word? What must be the system of interpretation which requires of its exponents to go to such lengths as these?

But it is not at once that the apostle states the conclusion, that “All Israel shall be saved.” He reaches it by successive and ascending steps. He argues (1) that through the fall of Israel salvation has come to the Gentiles, “to provoke them (Israel) to jealousy.” Can they be forever cast off, if even God's present mercy to the Gentiles be designed to provoke Israel to jealousy, and so beget in them gracious and holy desires after him under whose chastisements they at present remain? (2) If the Gentiles have reaped such profit from Israel's fall, what shall the receiving of Israel be “but life from the dead?” Here is anything but an obscure intimation, that Israel is yet to be received; and not only so, but that the reception of that people is to inaugurate a period of blessedness for the world—the Gentiles—with which the present is not worthy to be compared. (3) The reception of Israel having been thus referred to, the apostle reasons from the very graffing in of the wild Gentile olive to the good olive tree from which the natural Jewish branches have been broken off, that it is possible for these latter to be gaffed in again. (4) He advances another step, and proves it to be not merely possible, but probable: “how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be graffed into their own olive tree?” Then (5) finally, he declares the certainty of their conversion and salvation, quoting in proof of it a passage from Isa. 59:20, which inseparably associates it both with the coming of the Lord, and the introduction of millennial blessedness on earth. No doubt there has been, is, and shall yet be, an election from among Israel; but Israel itself, as a nation, is elected of God, and it is with reference to this election that the apostle says, “the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” Of what other election than that of the nation itself can the apostle say, “as concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sakes?” Our brethren sometimes indulge themselves in speaking of a certain passage as “a millstone round the neck of pre-millennialism;” but certainly the eleventh of Romans may not inappropriately be regarded as a like fatal encumbrance to those “high-minded” prophetic theories, which deny the validity of Israel's national hopes, and seek to resolve all its bright prophetic future into the present heritage of “Gentile branches,” even now through unheedfulness to this warning grown “wise in their own conceits,” and ready alas! to be cut off!”

One remark we must by no means omit—that it was not by Israel alone that Christ was rejected when he came before. He was presented to the Gentiles, in the person of Pontius Pilate, the representative of Gentile power; and his rejection is treated by himself and by the Holy Ghost as his rejection by the world. It was, as we have seen, in Israel that the test was applied; but the question to be decided was, whether Christ would be received in his own world. It was decided in the negative. In John's gospel, where Christ is presented in the full divine glory of his person, as the Son of the Father, rather titan in his dispensational characters and relations, as in the other gospels, this fact is largely and solemnly insisted on. “He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not” (John 1:10). “This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men [not Jews merely] loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (ch. 3:19). “Now is the judgment of this world” (ch. 12:31). “The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him” (ch, 14:17). “Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more: but ye see me” (verse.19). “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you” (ch. 15:18). “And when he (the Holy Ghost) is come, he will reprove the world of sin.... because they believe not on me” (ch. 16:8, 9). “O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee” (ch. 17:25). Who can read these passages and entertain a doubt, that the Christ of the Acts and of the Epistles is a world-rejected Christ? This is another great truth which our brethren who reject pre-millennialism overlook, or, at least, by their system, set aside. This really constitutes the most essential, fundamental difference between their theories and the Christianity of the New Testament, which consists in knowing, confessing, and serving Christ, and in waiting for him, as the rejected One of this world. “To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men” (1 Peter 2:4). By and by he will arise from off the Father's throne, and receive to himself the co-heirs who are now being called; the power of the throne will then be exercised in vindication of his long despised and rejected Name; and when all things are prepared for the solemn event, he and his saints will return, and this earth shall be subdued to his sway. Of these things the prophecies of the New Testament bear witness; the more they are studied, and the better they are understood, the more evident will it be, that no contrariety exists between the Old Testament and the New. The prophecies of the Old Testament leave room for the revelations and mysteries of the New; the latter fill up, but do not contradict, the former. They both exhibit the purposes and ways of God for the glorifying of himself in Christ, as one vast harmonious whole; and in their combined light, grace and righteousness, mercy and truth, Jew and Gentile, heaven and earth, are all seen to be to the praise of the glory of him, of whom, and through whom, and to whom, are all things: to whom, indeed, be glory forever. Amen.

Review of Waldegrave: 4. Three-Fold Cord or Christ's Three Offices of Prophet, Priest and King

The object of Mr. Waldegrave's second lecture is indicated by its title— “The kingdom of heaven, as now existing, the proper kingdom of Christ.” He represents pre-millenarians as maintaining the negative of this proposition; but prior to his entering on the direct discussion of it, he advances what he deems two strong preliminary reasons in its favor. What are these?

“In the first place, it may well be questioned whether the mediatorial offices of the Lord Jesus are, in operation, separable from each Other. A three-fold cord cannot be quickly broken. Christ is at this moment acting in the capacity of God's anointed Prophet; he is also discharging the functions of God's anointed Priest; it is difficult to believe that He has never yet exercised dominion as God's anointed King, that He is not yet King de facto as well as de jure. The three offices would seem to be conferred for the same object, and to have, as respects the discharge of their several duties, the same beginning and the same termination. Their one object is the salvation—the salvation to the uttermost—of the people of God. Their actual exercise in the work of that salvation began with the ascension of Jesus; it shall terminate with the accomplishment of the number of his elect.” Bamp. Lect. pp. 39, 40.

We are not at present called upon either to affirm or deny that Christ “has never yet exercised dominion as God's anointed King:” but as to our author's mode of proving that he has, we may safely affirm, that it would be difficult to find, within the same compass in the works of any sober-minded Christian writer, so many erroneous and contradictory statements as the passage just quoted contains. Have Christ's three offices of Prophet, Priest, and King, as respects their actual exercise, the same beginning and the same end? And did they begin with his ascension? Did not our Lord discharge the functions of it? Prophet yea, of God's anointed Prophet—while on earth? What meant, then, his quotation of Isa. 61:1, 2, in the synagogue at Nazareth? — “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” Could any language more fully express his being anointed to the Prophetic office? And was it only anticipatively of his ascension that he quoted these words? Hear what he says: when he had closed the book, given it to the minister, and sat down; when all eyes were fastened upon him; “he began to say unto them, THIS DAY is this Scripture FULFILLED in your ears,” Luke 4:21. Christ not the anointed Prophet until He ascended! This is indeed a worthy use of the principles of interpretation asserted by our author! Had he forgotten his own words, page 24, where, having referred to “direct quotations” by our Lord from the Old Testament, “coupled with express mention of their fulfillment,” he says, The expositions thus supplied must, without hesitation, be accepted as sound. Nor should there be any reserve in our submission to them. For indeed to speak of accommodations, of inadequate and inceptive accomplishments, where Jesus speaks of fulfillments, is virtually to set aside His Prophetical authority, and to open the door to a most dangerous license in the interpretation of Scripture.”

Most heartily do we concur in these sentiments. But how condemnatory they are of the position maintained by their author, that Christ began the “actual exercise” of his prophetic office when he ascended on high! Is not Luke 4:18, 19, a “direct quotation” from Isa. 61:1, 2? Is it not “coupled with express mention of its fulfillment?” Where besides have we the mention of such a fact in terms equally express? “This day is this Scripture FULFILLED in your ears!” And was it “fulfilled?” Then, Mr. W. is in error who he says, “their actual exercise (that of Christ's three offices of Prophet, Priest, and King) began with the ascension of Jesus.” if it was not “fulfilled,” our Lord's words would have to be understood by way of “accommodation, of inadequate and inceptive accomplishment;” and to understand them this would be, according to our author himself, to “virtually set aside Christ's prophetic authority, and to open the door to a most dangerous license in the interpretation of Scripture.”

But it is not by implication alone that Mr. W. contradicts himself on this subject. Let the reader weigh with each other the two following quotations—

“The three offices have, as respects the discharge of their several duties, the carne beginning and the stone termination. Their actual exercise began with the ascension of Jesus,” p. 40.

“But where are the words of this great Prophet recorded? To begin with the four gospels: each contains enough, and more than enough to establish him for a Prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people. And yet these were, as the Holy Ghost testifies, but the beginning of his instruction,” p. 18.

Let not the reader suppose that we have any satisfaction in exposing such self-contradiction for its own sake. Gladly would we pass it by as a slip of the pen, were it not that each of the contradictory propositions maintained by Mr. W. is, in its turn, essential to his argument. It behooved him in the first lecture to maintain that Christ was a prophet, and acted as a prophet while on earth: the position he seeks in his second lecture to establish requires that Christ should only begin to act thus when he ascended on high! The three offices are to be coeval in their exercise; and to maintain that Christ acted as a king while on earth would be more than any readers could be expected to believe; while, as to the priestly office, the apostle explicitly declares, that “if he (Christ) were on earth, he should not be a priest,” Heb. 8:4. Scripture decides that Christ's exercise of his priesthood dates from his ascension to the right hand of God. Our author, to prove that his kingly office also had its commencement then, maintains (though in contradiction of his own statements, as well as of God's word) that it was then he entered on the discharge of his prophetic functions. Such must always be the confusion attendant upon the effort to bend God's Word to a system of our own. The very opposite of Mr. W.'s argument is the truth. He says that the three offices of Prophet, Priest, and King, are coeval in their exercise; but instead of this, the Lord first fulfilled his prophetic ministry while in humiliation on the earth; he then entered on his priestly functions when he ascended up on high; and it is when he comes again in his glory that he will be manifested as king. We do not mean by this that he ceased to be “God's anointed Prophet” when he began to act as “God's anointed Priest;” or, that he will lay aside his priesthood when manifested in the glories of his kingly power. We know that to be “a priest upon his throne,” Zech. 6:13, is his distinctive glory in that day. Nor do we object to Mr. W.'s thought, as expressed in his first lecture, that Christ continues to fill on high the prophetic office on which he entered while on earth. All we maintain is, that what distinguished his sojourn here was his prophetic work, while as yet he had not entered on the functions of his priestly or his kingly office; that what distinguishes his session at the right hand of God is the discharge of his priestly functions, however, he may yet, in a certain sense, fill the place of prophet; and that what will distinguish the coming dispensation, will be his proper, actual reign, however the glories of his priestly and prophetic offices may be conjoined therewith.

It may be interesting, ere we leave this subject of time, to observe how our post-millennarian brethren differ from each other, besides contradicting themselves. Pre-millennialists are expected to be of one mind on every important subject; and their differences, even on subordinate points, are dwelt upon by their opponents as a strong presumption against their views.'' If such an argument be of any weight, it may be well to see how it bears upon our brethren by whom it is used. The Bampton lecturer dates, as we have seen, the commencement of Christ's “actual exercise” of all his three offices from his ascension to heaven. Mr. Lyon, on the other hand, dates his reign, at least, from the promise to our first parents in the garden. “His kingdom really began when the first promise was given.” Millennial Studies, p. 4. Mr. W. maintains that “as respects the discharge of their several duties,” the three offices of Prophet, Priest, and King have not only “the same beginning,” but also “the same termination.” Mr. L. teaches, that “he will continue on the throne as king, though not as priest, his priestly functions ceasing because there will no longer be any need for them,” It is evidently not by Mr. W.'s argument of “the threefold cord” that Mr. Lyon has been led to reject pre-millennialism; and if it has so little weight with his friends, he need not be disappointed to find it of still less cogency with his opponents, against whom it is directed.

Our author's second preliminary argument in favor of his proposition, that the kingdom of heaven, as now existing, is the proper kingdom of Christ,” is a singular one indeed. It is no other than its invisibility “To walk by faith, not by sight—to endure as seeing Him Who is invisible, is the characteristic, the duty, the prerogative of the Christian. Hence the fact, that the present, true, real, and effectual kingship of Messiah calls for the exercise of his faith, is in very deed a strong presumption in its favor,” pp. 41, 42.

If this be not to confound things that differ, how could such a censure be incurred? We had always supposed that the period of faith and patience stood contrasted in Scripture with that of rest, and blessedness, and glory, in which Christ and his saints are to share the reward of his sufferings on their behalf, and in which their endurance of suffering for his sake is also to find its recompense. It was for Mr. W. to discover, that the distinctive features of the one period prove it identical with the other—the contrasted period The apostle, in writing to the Thessalonians, does speak of glorying in their patience and faith, which says, he “is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer,” 2 Thess. 1:5. Nay, says our author, it proves that the kingdom has already come! It is the place of a Christian to walk by faith; therefore, argues Mr. W., the present exercise of the proper and only royalty ever to be exercised by Christ may be inferred from its being an object of faith, not of sight! But it is not of Christ's royalty that the apostle treats, where he says, that “we walk by faith, not by sight” : it is of heaven's joys; and Mr. W.'s argument is as applicable to the one subject as the other. It as much proves, that we are now, in the only sense in which we ever shall be, in heaven, as that Christ now reigns in the only sense in which he ever will reign. Alas! we are not in heaven. it is by faith, not by sight, that we walk. But does this mean that the future objects of that faith—the “things hoped for,” of which faith is doubtless “the substance” does it mean that these are actually present! No, but the reverse. When these are present, and we are present with the Lord, “sight” will take the place of “faith"; and when Christ reigns, in that sense in which his glorious reign is foretold in Scripture, his royalty will be manifest to sense, and no longer, as at present, an object of faith alone.

Review of Waldegrave: 5. New Testament Millenarianism, Part 1

It would but weary our readers were we to subject the whole of Mr. Waldegrave's thick octavo to an examination as minute as has been already bestowed on his opening lecture. Nor is it in any sense requisite. The principles of interpretation laid down in the first lecture are so carried out and applied in the subsequent discourses, that if we have succeeded in sheaving these principles themselves to be faulty and unsound, we need bestow no pains on the discourses which are confessedly founded thereon. The fundamental character of the “axiomatic propositions” with which our author commences the discussion, is not only admitted, but triumphantly asserted, both by the London Quarterly and the British and Foreign Evangelical Review. The latter declares that these propositions constitute “the best feature of the work;” while the former says that, “with great force of argument,” he “successfully establishes” them, and lays them down “as essential to the correct interpretation of the word of God.” We are happy to find that since our first notice of the volume, it has been reviewed both in the Quarterly Journal of Prophecy, and in the London Monthly Review. Both works concur in the condemnation clue to Mr. W.'s fundamental axioms; while our own readers, we trust, have been fully satisfied, that humbly and prayerfully to study the prophetic portions of God's Word, whether figurative or literal in their style, is a more likely mode of arriving at the truth on prophetic subjects, than Mr.W.'s plan of subordinating the greater part of prophetic scripture to other portions, in which prophetic subjects are not handled. Let the word of God speak for itself as a whole, is what we should earnestly suggest; and let us not cumber ourselves, in the study of it, with rules and principles of man's devising.

The second lecture has already been slightly noticed. We only now add, that, in common with Mr. Lyon and other post-millenarians, the lecturer merges all that is distinctive of Christ's royalty, or kingdom, in the place which he fills as the Redeemer, or Savior, of his people. Referring to his three offices of Prophet, Priest, and King, Mr. W. affirms that they are “conferred for the same object,” and he defines that object to be, the “salvation to the uttermost of the people of God.” Our brethren see nothing in Scripture of a period or dispensation in which Christ is to be displayed as the Second Adam, inheriting through redemption, the dominion forfeited by the first, in which the sword of government first entrusted to Noah, and since wielded by so many for purposes of selfish ambition and revenge, shall be held by the One, of whom David sang: “He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God; and he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain,” 2 Sam. 23:3, 4. —in which David's royalty shall be exercised by David's Son and Lord, and in which the supremacy of the four great Gentile kingdoms shall be set aside and replaced by the final and universal kingdom of the Son of Man. With them everything is limited to the single subject of the salvation of the soul, and the glory of Christ in connection therewith: or, if there be one superadded thought, it is that of his glory as Judge, on the great white throne, declaring the final award of each individual, in the sentence of endless happiness, or eternal woe. But to state such a theory is to refute it. Its own poverty and nakedness, form the most striking contrast to the richly varied testimony of Holy Writ, to “the sufferings of Christ and the glories (see the Greek) which should follow.” Of these glories, the “many crowns” on the head of Jesus are the expressive symbols; and while to saved sinners the name of Savior may well be the sweetest that they know, who that knows that name would wish the One who bears it to be despoiled of any one of those “many crowns,” or to be shorn of that other name, “KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS"?

No doubt there is a kingdom, of which our Lord spoke largely and solemnly while on earth: a kingdom which he announced as then near at hand, and which did form a most prominent subject of his instructions to his disciples and of his discourses to the multitude. But nothing can be more unfounded than Mr. W.'s assertion, that “the words, ‘kingdom of heaven,’ ‘kingdom of God,’ and ‘kingdom of the Son of man,’ are in the gospels, convertible terms,” p. 44. Mark and Luke do indeed generally use the term, “Kingdom of God,” where Matthew uses the phrase, “Kingdom of heaven;” but this fact by no means proves them to be in themselves, and universally, “convertible terms.” “Kingdom of heaven” is a phrase used nowhere in Scripture but in Matthew: and the instances in which that evangelist employs the other expression, “Kingdom of God,” show most decisively that they are not “convertible terms.” “The kingdom of heaven” is always spoken of by our Lord as future, though near at hand; and for this reason, that it denotes a rule or sovereignty exercised by himself after his ascension to heaven. Accordingly, where in Matthew he speaks of the kingdom as then present or existing, he does not use Matthew's phrase, “Kingdom of heaven,” but changes it to that of the other evangelists, “Kingdom of God.” “But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you,” Matt. 12:28. “The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof,” ch. 11:43, And while even these two expressions are thus seen to be anything but uniformly interchangeable, the other phrase, “Kingdom of the Son of man,” is in the gospels contrasted with the ordinary use and signification of Matthew's term, “Kingdom of heaven.”

The proof of this we proceed to place before our readers.

The great subject of Matt. 13, our Lord himself being witness, is “the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.” The disciples ask why he speaks in parables to the multitude, and in reply he says, “Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.” Why does he say “mysteries of the kingdom of heaven?” If the kingdom of heaven as now existing be, as our author affirms, “the proper kingdom of Christ,” if it be, as the third lecture seeks to show, “the true kingdom of his father David; “why should such an expression be employed as “the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven?” The fact is, that the Old Testament had foretold that “the children of Israel” should “abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim.” But then it had also declared, “Afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king; and shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days,” Hos. 3:4, 5. Isaiah, too, had borne witness to the judicial blindness which was to come upon Israel. Our Lord quotes his words in this very chapter: “This people's heart is waxed gross,” etc. The prophet's anxieties had been awakened to know the duration of this judgment on his beloved people, and he had asked, “Lord, how long?” receiving for answer the words, “Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate, and the Lord have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land,” Isa. 6:11, 12. It would be superfluous to attempt to exhibit here Isaiah's testimony to Israel's restoration and blessedness at the close of this long, dreary period. It was shown in our last paper but one, how fully the prospect of Israel's restoration, and of our Lord's return in power and glory in connection therewith, is recognized both by himself and by the apostle Paul. Then the kingdom of God will come with power. Then shall the dispensation of the fullness of times be ushered in, in which all things, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, shall be gathered together in one, even in Christ. (See Eph. 1) But how was the interval to be filled up? In what character was the ride of heaven, or of God, to exist during the days of Israel's blindness and dispersion, and during the consequent postponement of the proper kingdom of Christ—the kingdom of the Son of man? “The mysteries of the kingdom of heaven,” as unfolded in the parables of Matt. 13, form the answer to this deeply momentous question. Christ was to suffer first, and to reign afterward. This all Scripture shows. But more than this——his kingdom was to exist in mystery first—in open manifestation afterward. The transition from the one state to the other is, moreover, most definitely set forth in this very discourse. “The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of HIS KINGDOM all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. THEN shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father,” verses 41-43. Then it is, at the harvest—the end of the age, that mystery terminates, and manifestation begins. To this agree the words of the mighty angel in Rev. 10:7: “But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God” shall “be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.” Accordingly we read, chap. 11:15: “And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign forever and ever.” But with our brethren, the kingdom in mystery and the kingdom in manifestation, the period of patience and that of judgment in power are hopelessly confounded: nor do they suppose that the Son of man will gather out of his kingdom all things which offend, till just before he delivers up that kingdom to God, even the Father, when God shall be all in all One strange argument brought forward by our author in Lecture 3 we must not overlook. Stating his subject to be, “The true meaning of the prophecies, which are said to require that Jesus of Nazareth should yet be manifested to the world as King of the Jews,” he says: — “I begin by remarking, that if the pre-millenarian interpretation of those prophecies were sound, the New Testament is the very place of all others where we might naturally expect to find it clearly enunciated. The Jew had his full share, both in the sermons the apostles preached, and in the letters they wrote. Affection would combine with duty in prompting the first heralds of the gospel to take every stumbling-block out of his way. And what were the stumbling-blocks of the Jew? Messiah crucified, and the door of faith opened to the Gentiles. What then, I may well ask, would have been the obvious course for the apostles to follow, if Israel's ancient glory was yet to be received under the personal government of Jesus the Son of David? Surely they would have said, 'Be not offended at a crucified Messiah; the prophetic writings must be viewed in their integrity; they speak of the sufferings of Christ, as well as of the glories that should follow; you do wrong to overlook the cross, while you gaze so intently on the crown. O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken; learn first to accept as your Messiah the despised and rejected Jesus; soon will he come again as Israel's triumphant King.'“ etc., pp. 84-87.

This, says our author, is the way in which modern millenarians would preach to the Jews, and in which he supposes the apostles would have addressed them, had they been millenarian in their views and expectations. But did Mr. W. forget, when penning these words, that millenarians hold no less really than himself, that Israel's rejection of Christ was an awful sin, justly punished by the nation's longest and most complete dispersion? that however grace might linger over Jerusalem, so long as the feeblest hope remained of its repentance, the only token of real repentance would have been their cordial reception of the Christ they had crucified? and that as long as this point was held by them against God, no one who cared for God's glory could use his promises of final restoration for the purpose of coaxing and flattering impenitent rebels, as Mr. W. supposes millenarians would have done? Mr. W. writes as though millenarians deemed the rejection of Christ by Israel to have arisen from a mere intellectual mistake; as though we thought this mistake had only to be corrected, for Israel to receive him with open arms! Alas! it was a widely different case, They had both seen and hated both Christ and the Father. They loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. Ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own, they had not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God. Let, then, the final purposes of God's grace as to the nation be what they might, that which the apostles had to testify to the Jews was this, that persisting in their rejection of the Christ they had crucified, continuing to resist, as their fathers always had resisted, the Holy Ghost, judgment was what inevitably awaited them. What would our author think of preaching the glories of heaven to such as were obstinately rejecting the gospel of God's grace, and hardening themselves in sin? Just as reasonably might the apostles have dwelt in detail on the glories of Israel's future restoration, to the men who were ready to follow up the murder of the Messiah by the murder of his martyr, Stephen.

Still, where it was a question of ignorance, and not of willful rejection of the truth, our Lord does (namely, to the disciples) use the very words which our author supposes would have been suitable, had millenarianism been the truth. “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory.” Yea, more; until Jerusalem's rejection of an ascended Christ was fully confirmed, the apostles did present the hope of Christ's return, to bring the times of refreshing, the times of restitution of all things, as one great motive to repentance. This was shown in a previous paper, to which our readers can refer.

But while, in addressing that impenitent generation, it would have been preposterous to dwell in detail on the glories and triumphs which await repentant Israel in the latter day, the apostles' silence as to these details is no justification of our author in denying them. The denial of Israel's prospects, as unfolded in the Old Testament, may be, and is, a stumbling-block to the modern Jew, when connected with the preaching of Christ crucified. This fact millenarians have pointed out with obvious justice and conclusive force: but it does not follow that Mr. W. is entitled to put words in their mouth, or, rather, on their behalf to put words in the mouths of the apostles, the folly and extravagance of which must appear to all. The folly and extravagance rest not with millenarians, but with the author, who could thus misrepresent the requirements of their doctrine, supposing it to have been that of the apostles themselves. We are perfectly content with what the apostles did say, and immeasurably prefer it to any millenarianism put into their lips by Mr. W.

Review of Waldegrave: 6. New Testament Millenarianism: Part 2

"The ingathering and glorification of the church” is the subject of Lecture 4, in which our author simply gives expression to the popular but unfounded idea, that all saints from the beginning to the end of time constitute the church. We are quite aware that Mr. W.'s views on this point are shared by many who differ from him widely on prophetic subjects; but his mistake is not the less serious on this account. On any other subjects than those of Scriptural inquiry and interpretation men would smile at such a quiet assumption of the point to be proved, as that which characterizes Lecture 4. The opening sentence declares, in the most positive terms, the affirmative view of the question which ought to be discussed. “As Christ is the exclusive Author, so is the church mystical the exclusive recipient of salvation,” (p. 140). So affirms Mr. W. But suppose any one should deny the truth of this. proposition, on whom would fairly rest the burden of proof? Surely on Mr. W. himself; but in vain would any one read his discourse with the view of obtaining it. He assumes the truth of this opening declaration, and reasons from it throughout, as though it were not only uncontroverted, but incontrovertible. “And so has it been from the very beginning. Immediately that Adam fell was the foundation of this spiritual edifice laid in the primeval promise of redemption. Successive ages beheld it rise, as one by one, Abel, Enoch, Noah, and all who, like them, by faith obtained a good report, were builded up upon the one chief cornerstone.”

It may shock the prejudices of some who differ from our author on prophetic subjects, as well as of many who agree with him, when we affirm our conviction that this paragraph expressly contradicts God's word. Such is our conviction, nevertheless: but instead of assuming its truth, we proceed at once to lay the grounds of it before our readers. Mr. W. says, that the foundation of the church was laid in the primeval promise. The Lord Jesus Christ said, four thousand years after the first promise was given, “Upon this rock (the confession of him just made by Peter) I will build” —not “I have builded,” or “I am, building,” but “I will build my church,” Matt. 16:18. That is, he speaks of it as a then future work. And though he was, in his own blessed person, as the Son of the living God, the foundation of the church, it was not as a living person upon earth that he was laid as the foundation. For this his death was indispensable. “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit,” John 12:24. It was not until rejected of the Jewish builders, that he was exalted to be “the head of the corner:” and that his death was indispensable to the Church being builded on him as its foundation, the Epistle to the Ephesians largely testifies. “For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, the law of commandments in ordinances, for to make in himself of twain one new man so making peace; and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby,” (ch. 2:14-16). It was thus and then the foundation was laid; and being laid, the apostle adds, “Now, therefore, ye (Gentile believers) are no more stranger sand foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets [New Testament prophets, surely], Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone” (verses 19, 20).

Do we wish, then, to deny or call in question the salvation, saintship, life, or glory, of the Old Testament believers? God forbid! They were quickened by the Spirit beyond doubt. By virtue of the foreseen sacrifice of Christ they were forgiven and saved. They will all have part in the first resurrection, and partake of heavenly glory. But no one of these things, no, nor all of them together constitute the church. The church shares these things, life, justification, resurrection, and heavenly glory, with the saints of Old Testament times; but that which constitutes the church is something additional to all these, and of which the Old Testament bears not a single trace. It is the actual living unity with Christ and with each other of those, who, since Christ's resurrection, are formed into this unity, by the presence of the Holy Ghost come down from heaven. God had a nation in former times, and the Holy Ghost by Caiaphas teaches us, that it was for that nation Christ died. All the blessedness, therefore, of restored and forgiven Israel in days to come is as simply owing to the atoning death of Christ, as is now the salvation of individual souls. But “not for that nation only,” the Holy Ghost adds, “but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad,” (John 11:52). There were, then, children of God prior to the death of Christ; but instead of forming one body, they were isolated individuals, “scattered abroad.” For their gathering together in one, the death of Christ was absolutely needful. So was his resurrection; for it is only as “the beginning, the first-born from the dead,” that he is the “head of the body, the church,” (Col. 1:18). Nor was it till he had ascended, that the Holy Ghost could be sent down; and it is by his presence and power that the gathering together in one takes place. “If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you,” (John 16:7). “The Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified,” (7:39). “Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear” (Acts 2:33). “By one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles,” (1 Cor. 12:13). It is of Christ, ascended and glorified, that we read in Eph. 1:22, 23, that “the church is his body, the fullness (or complement) of him that filleth all in all.”

Now it is of the church thus formed and constituted that Scripture predicates completeness at the epoch of Christ's return. How easy to see that, if statements made in Scripture concerning this elect body of Christ be applied to all saints from the beginning to the end of time, false conclusions may easily be drawn from premises so unsound. All our author's reasonings as to baptism and the Lord's supper, the intercession of Christ and the preaching of the word; all his attempts to show that, on millenarian grounds, these would have no place after the completion of the church and the coming of Christ; all his endeavors to reduce us to the dilemma of holding, either that no souls will be saved after Christ comes, or that they will be saved without the present means or channels of salvation—all rest on the baseless assumption that the church consists of all saved souls from the beginning to the end of time, and all, consequently, fall to the ground. Souls were saved for four thousand years before the church had any existence, save in the counsels and purposes of God; and souls will doubtless be saved throughout the millennium, after the completion of this wondrous “workmanship” of his—this chef-d' oeuvre of his wisdom, power, and grace. If there lacked not the means and appliances of salvation before the church began, why should we suppose any lack when the church is perfected and in glory with her Lord?

On the subject of the judgment Mr. W.'s great endeavor is, first, to prove that millenarianism “deprives it of its chiefest terrors to the ungodly;” and, secondly, that these terrors consist in what he regards as the doctrine of Scripture, namely, that of a simultaneous judgment of all the righteous and all the wicked. But as all his arguments on these topics have been answered again and again in well-known works on prophetic subjects, we will not detain our readers by any detailed remarks thereon. On Mr. W.'s theory, that the millennium is already past, and that we are probably far advanced into the little season by which it was to be succeeded, the doctrine of a simultaneous judgment of all at Christ's coming may well, indeed, strike terror into the hearts of the ungodly. On this theory the coming and the judgment are both at the door. But how the postponement of Christ's coming, and of all judgment, to the end of a thousand years yet to commence, should be a doctrine of greater terror to the wicked than that of Christ's speedy appearing in the clouds of heaven, to execute judgment on his living foes, having first received his people to himself, we are perfectly at a loss to conceive.

Lecture 6 is on the “recompense of reward to be conferred upon the saints at the second coming of their Lord.” With much that it contains we heartily agree. We hold as strenuously as Mr. W., that the main blessedness of the saints hereafter is in the visible and personal presence of Christ among them, or, to be more accurate, their presence thus with Christ. Heaven itself, we delight to know, is the locality of the saints' inheritance. If some pre-millennialists have thought otherwise, our author cannot be ignorant that it is in company with some of their most distinguished opponents, that they look on the renovated earth as the eternal dwelling-place of the saints. Our own belief is, however, identical with Mr. W.'s, that the place which Jesus has gone to prepare for us is in the heaven where his own glorified body now is, and of which he says, “that where I am, there ye may be also.” Equally satisfied are we that, from the moment the saints are caught up to meet the Lord Jesus in the air, their state will “not admit of any, the very slightest admixture of evil.” But is it not a purely gratuitous assumption of our author's, that this unalloyed perfection of the future state of the saints precludes any contact or connection (by divine appointment, and as ministers of good) with a state of things less perfect, than their own? What! is the state of the holy angels imperfect, because as ministering spirits they are now sent forth to minister to them which shall be heirs of salvation? And if angels can be made thus the channels of divine beneficence, remaining undefiled and uninjured, their joy unclouded by the imperfection and need with which they come in contact (but only to succor and befriend), shall it be deemed impossible for those who are “blessed and holy,” as having part in the first resurrection, to be ministers of blessing to the earth over which they are to reign with Christ a thousand years? And yet this is the sum and substance of Mr. W.'s argument in Lecture 6.

As to the resurrection and reign of the saints with Christ for a thousand years, Mr. W. judges “that the thousand years may be even now in progress, if not entirely past,” (p. 377). He does not venture to propound this view till he has occupied more than half of Lecture 7 with an exposition of the spiritualist theory held by Whitby, Dr. Brown, Mr. Lyon, and many others. This theory he prefers to the pre-millennial view; but after stating certain objections to it, he proposes, as free from such objections and as best entitled in his judgment to be adopted, his own view above stated. And though at first so modestly introduced as a question whether “the thousand years may be even now in progress, if not entirely past,” it grows, in the course of its development, into a theory of interpretation, in which the binding of Satan is reduced to his being “for that period forbidden to invent and propagate any new (!!) religious imposture among nominal Christians”; the resurrection and reign of the saints with Christ are resolved into their being, while yet on earth, “quickened together with Christ,” and seated “with him in heavenly places;” and this spiritual reign and resurrection are represented as perfectly compatible with their suffering unto death at the very time they reign as risen with Christ! But hear Mr. W. himself:

“If this view of the verso be correct, the thousand years will prove to be a period in which Christ's witnesses are witnesses even unto death-a period, in short, of martyrdom, not of triumph—a period in which Satan (being precluded indeed from the invention of fresh delusions), is able notwithstanding to wield those already in existence with such effect as to make the church of God to prophesy in sackcloth and ashes,” p. 386.

This is, no doubt, a view of the millennium quite new to most of our readers. We will not pass upon them the reflection which would be implied, in seeking to rebut a principle by which Scripture language is made to mean exactly the opposite of what it says. Such a principle is not to be met by argument, but by the moral reprobation which attaches to the calling good evil, and evil good. But we are as yet only on the threshold of our author's system. The thrones, and sitters on them, to whom judgment was given, are the powers that be, employed as executioners of Satan's malice, in persecuting the saints to death The saints reign, be it remembered, and Satan is bound all the while! “The rest of the dead,” who rise not till the thousand years are finished, are “the great body of truly living souls brought to God” during the little season in which Satan is loosed from his prison and goes forth to deceive the nations of the earth afresh! The ten centuries preceding the Reformation are suggested by Mr. W. as “the longer, the millennial period portrayed in the passage before us,” while it is intimated that the “three centuries which have rolled away since that epoch “have borne the marks of “the little season” which was to succeed the millennium.

Such is the “New Testament Millenarianism” of the Bampton. Lectures; a system commended to us by the lecturer, as one which does “not dislocate the whole frame-work of Christian truth,” which he alleges is done by expecting a pre-millennial advent of our blessed Lord. To set aside such an expectation is the great object of his book. In this object, his reviewers of the London Quarterly, and the British and Foreign Evangelical, are heartily agreed. But as to the interpretation of Rev. 20 they are wide as the poles asunder. Mr. W. declares it already fulfilled: the London Quarterly maintains “that the scenes which this Scripture portrays are yet future,” and addresses itself to the inquiry, “Is it to be interpreted literally or figuratively?” Nor is the inquiry prosecuted far, before the conclusion is arrived at and stated thus, “We have no hesitation in saying, that the only consistent interpretation is the figurative one, which recognizes the revival of the early martyrs and confessors in their spirit and character.” The British and Foreign Evangelical, while dealing most tenderly with Mr. W.'s millennial theory, is yet obliged to say, “There are, in our opinion, two fatal objections to this view. First, the text on the face of it appears plainly to intimate that the life—whatever be meant by it—was posterior to the death, not contemporaneous with it.... Throughout the New Testament wherever it [the word it ἀνάοτασις] is used in connection with death, there is not one instance in which it does not signify a state posterior to death—either the intermediate state or the bodily resurrection, which, for our own part, we think it plain that the language of this symbolical vision expresses.”

Admirable unanimity of sentiment! Here are three writers, who agree in denouncing the expectation of a pre-millennial advent of Christ, and in opposing the literal interpretation of John's millennial vision. But when asked to interpret it themselves, one says, It is already accomplished. No, says the second, its accomplishment is future, but it is to be figuratively understood. No, says the third, it is bodily resurrection, which the language of this symbolical vision expresses.

Here, for the present, we conclude our notice of these books. Dr. Brown's book is by far the ablest of any which have appeared in opposition to pre-millennialism, and we rejoice that an examination of it is in progress by another pen. The Lord grant that we may not be permitted, amid any heats of controversy, to lose sight of the solemn, sanctifying truths in which all real Christians are agreed! Whereto we have already attained, may we walk by the same rule, and mind the same thing; remembering the promise, that if in anything we be otherwise minded, God shall reveal this unto us also.

On the Work of Christ

Mr. Scherer has added a second letter to the one already known, and has just published them together.

His object is to show that faith can remain untouched in spite of the denial of the inspiration of the Scriptures; but the second letter is already the full demonstration of the contrary. The doctrine which it contains is simply, with some fine sounding phrases, the denial of the atonement of Christ, and of the doctrine of justification by faith which flows from it.

The system of Mr. Scherer, which has not even the merit of originality, is only Irvingism diluted. It is, moreover, the adoration of man, colored by a certain mystic tint. Under pretext of glorifying the person of Christ, mysticism denies the efficacy of His work. Now, without the doctrine of atonement (such is the deceit of the heart), admiration of the person of Christ and of His life, may, in fact, be the admiration of oneself. Christ was a man, and in deifying man in Him, they apply to themselves the halo of His glory, under pretext of the duty and capacity of being inwardly like Him This system pretends to something more real, more intimate, more personal in religion. Poor heart of man! When will he learn that nothing humbles him so much, (and this is what is necessary), that nothing operates so much in him in the way he needs, as to know that all was done outside of him? To boast of one's humility, and to be humble, are two very different things. It is not in thinking of oneself so as to imitate humility, that one becomes humble; it is in being a debtor for everything to the grace of Him who has saved us. Pharisaism does not consist in attributing all to oneself, but in blessing God for what one is, instead of blessing Him for what He is Himself.

I do not pretend to treat thoroughly this question; but only to examine some points of Mr. Scherer's letter.

There is nothing new in his system, except that he cuts oft; as not being inspired, that which the mystics content themselves with leaving aside, namely, all the teaching of the Holy Ghost by the apostles.

One finds in this second letter, as in the first, the same levity of assertion on serious things, and that in cases where the least examination would have shown how destitute of foundation these assertions are. It is the same bombastic style, serving to veil capital defects in the reasoning and to hide unbelief, and the desire to exalt man. “Have you not found (he tells us) salvation and life in Jesus Christ? and if it is so, how can you fear, lest any fact, whatever, should weaken this fact of immediate certainty?" But it is not the fact of my possessing eternal life that this foolish doctrine weakens; it is the certainty of the truths that God uses as the means to communicate and maintain life. To deny inspiration is to deny the certain communication of truth on the part of God.

“Very far” (the author tells us) “from being incompatible with criticism, faith carries a critical force in itself." This contradicts the sufficiency of moral certitude, and the historical proofs of which he speaks in his first letter. But, passing over that, there is little but words in this phrase. How does the fact, that faith possesses a critical force, show that something else has that force? So far as there is any force in the reasoning, the reasoning itself precisely shows the contrary of what Mr. Scherer pretends to establish; for, if faith carries a critical force in itself, faith, having made its own criticism, excludes thereby the possibility of questioning its judgment: otherwise, its judgment is null. it pronounces, because it discerns. If I say, the tongue has in itself the capacity to discern the taste of what touches it, by attributing this faculty to the tongue, I exclude all judgment pronounced on the decision of the tongue; if not, I deny what I have just affirmed. The tongue says, 'honey is sweet.’ Who disputes its decision? Who disputes the power of the tongue—the very thing one has just been affirming? And this is owing to a special connection between the quality of an object, and the capacity to discern this quality. Thus, faith is faith, because it receives and understands the things of God, which are in connection with a capacity proper to faith; that is, the critical force which it has in itself implies the incompatibility of all other criticism. This is so much the more true, because the quality recognized by faith excludes by this very fact all other criticism; for faith recognizes the authority of God in that which it receives; it believes God: otherwise, it is not faith. Who will criticize God and His words? But, until one has received a communication as being such, faith is not in activity.

This manner of expressing oneself is, however, very imperfect, because it takes in only the fact of the existence of faith in man. The word of God, as is always the case, gives us much more light than the best reasonings. “The spiritual man,” it tells us, “judgeth [discerneth] all things, yet he himself is judged [discerned] of no man." There is the criticism with which all other criticism is incompatible. And what is the force of this expression? It is, that God is there introduced, and that the Spirit of God is in the spiritual man, directs him and conducts him. He discerns all things because he is spiritual.

Now, mark well, too, the effect of this truth. The Holy Ghost, working in man, does not exclude the responsibility of man; on the contrary, it gives him the right feeling of his relationship with God, and judges all that is inconsistent with that relationship. He does not act independently of the Lord, because he subjects man to God, and to what God has said. This was true in the case of Christ, and perfectly true in His only. In us “the flesh lusteth against the spirit,” tending always to produce imperfection in discernment and conduct. And, again, the Holy Ghost, working in man, does not exclude the faculties of man; HE uses them; HE is not judged by them.

He uses them, so that it is human intelligence employed on all the subjects with which the Holy Ghost can occupy it, but employed by Him, enlightened by Him, receiving a capacity, in a certain sense, divine, without ceasing at the same time to be human. Man is thus delivered from the dominion of his corrupt nature. Reason neither judges nor governs; for, if it does, it is only the will of man aspiring to independence, that is, excluding God, and always wrong by the very fact of this exclusion. When God is not already supreme, and His authority absolute in the eyes of a man, the man is altogether in a lie, because he is not in his moral place. But, while employing and in a divine way enlarging the capacity of man, the Holy Ghost submits him necessarily to God, makes God known to him, makes him receive what is of God—the word—because it is the perfect expression of the judgment of God. It is true that the flesh is in us, and that this flesh “lusteth against the spirit,” so that imperfection is there. The result is not one of absolute perfection. It is only in as much as he is spiritual, as I have already said, that a man discerns all things.

The Spirit not only makes man subject to God, places him thus morally in what is true, and renders him capable of morally discerning; but He delivers him from the influence of the carnal motives which constantly vitiated his judgment. The Spirit presents to the affections of man, God in Christ, as well as a perfect development of the truth, in all the relationships of man with God, as sinner and as saint, and that according to the height of the parson and work of Christ, and it is His work alone which gives us the true estimate of sin. Christ always estimated sin according to God; but, as to us sinners, it is only in the cross that He can perfectly estimate it because we there see it outside ourselves, in whom all is darkened by sin. It is there that the hatred of man against God, and the love of God for man, have met in one and the same act; and it is there that the moral state of man and the perfect revelation of God, have been completely brought into evidence. That act is, at the same time, righteousness and salvation, death and judgment as they were never manifested before, and never will be; and in that act they have been manifested as salvation and as life, the means which God has opened for His sovereign love, and the salvation of the believer.

The insulting spear, which struck the Savior when already dead, only brought forth the water and the blood which atone for and cleanse the sin which made them flow.

Man, morally, his affections, his judgment, are thus purified by that Jesus whom the Holy Ghost presents to him, that he may possess in his heart. Sweet and sanctifying proof of the Father's love! The Holy Ghost in man is a real and divine power; but He also works morally, and in the intelligence of him in whom He dwells. The spiritual man discerneth all things. All means are at his disposal. He judgeth all things, he takes knowledge of all things if needful, according to the Spirit and by His direction. It is not his reason which judges; he judges spiritually of all things. He judges himself instead of pretending to judge God, as if he had a capacity independent of Him. It is this that is incompatible with faith; this is that criticism which is incompatible with faith, because faith acknowledges God, and judges that proud criticism, which, in its folly, would judge God.

If, then, one would speak of faith, it is because it has a sovereign power of criticism, because it is incompatible with criticism, That which criticizes supremely cannot be criticized, it would be a flagrant contradiction. “The spiritual man,” says Paul (for faith is an abstraction), “discerneth things, and he himself is judged of no man."

What is this transformation of faith or of truth? It purifies itself, you say, rejecting every foreign substance. Well and good; but what is that movement in which the constitutive elements of truth are found to be carried away? Is not the truth of God stable, immutable, and eternal, transforming man by its power and by grace, but remaining ever itself, and ever the same.

Mr. Scherer—and this is convenient—wishes one to have the courage to set aside the dogmatic notion of inspiration, and place oneself, with the appearance of faith, on the free ground of the historical point of view, etc. It is clear that if I do that, all is done. “The assurance of faith,” say you? In what? Founded on what? On Jesus Christ, will you tell me? But how should I have a divine history of Him, without there being a divine capacity to write it? It is a book that I read, it is not Himself that I see. Mr. Scherer will tell me that what I read is evidently divine. Agreed. But you must fully bear in mind that you have not Jesus personally. You have only what is written. It is that which must be divine, if the Jesus whom I know is divine. Is it man that does what is divine?

Mr. Scherer acknowledges fully that, in order to invent Jesus Christ, one must have been Christ himself. In effect, it is morally impossible to form a just idea of such a character, without having in one the moral elements of that character—without being oneself what He is. I add, that we have this further security— than the fact of invention—for this fact would have been the denial of that character, so that we must necessarily have the thing itself. Now, this is what we have by writing—who is capable of it? Man, or the men who wrote it? Then they are all Jesuses they are all inspired. This is so much the more evident, because, in order to have the whole of this perfect and adorable being, more men than one were employed. This history is not their own act; it is a whole which reproduces Him of whom they speak. Finally, if a man who has faith rids himself of the Scriptures which serve as a foundation to faith, the question is not to know if he loses his own faith, but if he has not destroyed the very foundations on which the faith of others may rest, and level the faithfulness of God, if he has not destroyed the very foundations of his own. For, if God has not spoken, on what is faith founded? If God has spoken by a man, then the man is inspired.

Mr. Scherer wishes us to “believe the truth.” “ You believe in Jesus Christ: believe also in the truth.” That is all very fine; but what does it mean? Truth is an abstraction. It must subsist somewhere. There is such a thing as the truth; moral perfection in relationship with the Supreme Being, or, at least, a just estimate of those relationships—a life and a position which expresses that estimate. A man who tells me things just as they are tells me the truth; but to tell of things just as they are in connection with God is to say a great deal. If everything in these relationships is in its normal state, it is moral perfection. In a state of sin the truth does not exist. All is a lie. I said, in the relationships with the Supreme Being; because, in the case of the creature, to exclude God, is falsehood itself. It is what Jesus says of the adversary— “He abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.” One cannot say, God is the truth, because God is perfect in Himself, and, again, no relationship is obligatory for Him. To say that a thing is the truth, there must be a point of comparison by which I can judge of the conformity of what is expressed to that which ought to be expressed. But this is not the case with respect to God. Viewed in His essential existence, God does not express Himself, He is what He is. He cannot be compared with anything; so, as the word expresses it, “Dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto." How then is one to have the truth?

The truth is in Christ himself. He is moral perfection in the relationship which can subsist with God, and in the most perfect way—the expression of God in His relationship with man. His life is also a life which is the just estimate of these relationships, amidst the evil where man is fallen. “He is the way, the truth, and the life.”

This is what Mr. Scherer says (it may be objected). “Can one,” he says, “truly believe in one without believing in the other?” But mark it well, for Mr. Scherer there is one and the other; and as to that other thing, the truth, where does it subsist—out of Christ? Where is it realized or possessed? Realized out of Christ! No one would dare to pretend such a thing and call himself a Christian. There would be another Christ. But possessed? Well, possessed out of Christ—where? There would still be another Christ; for to be this in thought, as we agreed, we ought to be this in point of fact. The man who possesses the truth outside of Christ does not want Him; he is himself the thing that he seeks! What then would be this truth which would be something besides Christ? When I know Christ, I know I possess the truth. I am certain that that truth will be glorified, because it glorifies God, and gives to each thing its own proper place. Although I might abstract, my confidence is not in an abstraction; it is in a living being, in Christ, and in God who glorifies Him.

Why distinguish confidence in the truth from confidence in Christ? Because the first is confidence in man—confidence in oneself.

This is most evident.

You have no confidence in the force of the truth, as to a tree or an animal, and you are right. Why? Because they lack the necessary capacity to receive it, and they can neither taste nor appreciate it. The force of the truth is then in the moral capacity of the one who receives it; that is to say, your confidence is in the moral state of man. It is true that the truth in Christ is adapted to the conscience of every man, whose rebel will rejects it. Under the influence of grace the soul tastes its truth. As to the natural man, “the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not.” For the rest, it is certain that truth came by Jesus Christ. What has been outside grace—its force in the heart of man? It is this, that the history of our precious Savior can teach us. Does Mr. Scherer believe that Christ is the truth? Was Christ received? Had the truth in its perfection that force which compels to receive it'? What then does that expression mean— “believe in the truth?” that is to say, believe in its intrinsic force to make itself received? It is but the adoration of man, in face of his conduct towards Christ. Would Mr. Scherer produce a truth more perfect than Christ, or believe in the efficacy of something less perfect? If one distinguishes between the truth and Christ, to believe in the truth it is but unbelief with respect to Christ. You confide in your attachment to the truth, which without that attachment is nothing. Man as a sinner, man obeying his lusts, is not attached to the truth; the truth has no influence on him.

But one may tell me that the man who possesses the truth, who loves it, who tastes it, has confidence in it, as well as in Christ. Is it a living being, and outside of Christ? Where does it exist? In the mind of him who has confidence in it.

But by what means will it have the force which inspires confidence? It is either by the power of God, and then it is faith by the power of grace, or else it is by the acceptation of him who approves of it—that is to say, by man. Now, God is here left outside. The work of God is faith in Christ. In the other case, it is confidence in man, confidence in oneself.

It is at the bottom that which Mr. Scherer acknowledges. For him, “faith in Christ is a sacrifice of self; confidence in the truth is a sacrifice of our timidity, of our prejudices, of our party spirit.” Who is it that thus overcomes himself? It is man. The man who is true in his heart, in his motives, but outside of Christ; for if it is Christ as power, as motive, and as object, it is faith in Christ, and it is not to believe also in the truth. This new God, for in order for to confide in Him, He must be God; this new God, I say, is only man after all!

Truth is of all importance. One of the most important characters of the Church is to be “the pillar and ground of the truth.”

We are going to see if Mr. Scherer upholds it.

He tells us that “Revelation supposes.... the knowledge of God and the conscience of sin.” Is that truth? The Savior said, and Mr. Scherer reminds us of it, “they that are sick need a physician.” No doubt, but he did not say, those who know themselves to be sick. But as to the knowledge of God, what does it reveal? The Apostle said, that “by the law is the knowledge of sin,” and that without law he would not have known sin. The Lord Himself says that the Holy Ghost would reprove the world of sin, because they did not believe in Jesus. If Mr. Scherer only means to say that every man has a conscience, I do not dispute it. But, to say that the Gospel supposes and does not create the sense of sin, and that the revelation of Jesus, as light, does not produce by grace, in the heart of man, the consciousness of what he is, this is to be as far off as possible from the truth. Mr. Scherer's own words show us the true consequence of this idea, that the Gospel supposes the knowledge of sin, and they prove that I do not exaggerate, in supposing that he means to say that the Gospel is not given to produce it. He says, “the Gospel is not for everybody; it addresses itself very directly to some, whilst with others it has not one point of contact.” Every Christian knows the contrary, and the word of God has a language entirely opposed to this. And if one has the consciousness of sin, without a revelation, wily, as Mr. Scherer will have it, is it faith which supposes a revelation that weeps and is prostrate in the dust; or which, like that of the woman which was a sinner, covers the Master's feet with her tears of repentance and stifled sobs?). If one has the sense of sin, with out a revelation, and thus without faith, how is there but one faith, that of the publican prostrate in the dust, or that which shed the tears of repentance—that is to say, which has a true sense of sin And, besides, is that indeed the only faith? “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, and peace.” We have “not received the spirit of bondage again to fear,” but we “have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.” Is that a false faith which says, He “loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father;” —and which also says, “in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory?”

In all that bears prostration or stifled sobs; or else did the apostles, notwithstanding, in spite of religious inspiration that Mr. Scherer attributes to them, describe a false faith. Is it that I desire these precious movements of a renewed heart and conscience? God preserve me from this! But, with the habitual pretension of sentimental spirituality, Mr. Scherer confounds the first movement of the quickening Spirit in the heart with the simplicity of peace, with the calm of spirit and peace which are the portion of him who knows Christ. If there is no other faith than that which sighs and covers the Master's feet with its stifled sobs, what was the faith of this very same woman, when she went away in peace, because her sins were forgiven, and when she knew, from the lips of Jesus Himself, that this faith had saved her? But, if one would tell me that, in the gospel, faith receives an answer which removes the sobs and the tears, it is in that case nonsense to allege there is but one, that which weeps. Here is faith in the gospel of the grace of God, which gives peace and joy, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us.

Sentimental people love their own sobs, not the grace which produced them. The Christian, feeble as he may be, loves God, because God loved him first. He thinks not of his repentance, but of Him who vouchsafed it to Him, who gave him access to Himself by the blood of the Lamb, and who made him joint-heir with Christ His Son, according to His ineffable love. This ignorance of the gospel explains itself by things still more serious, that we meet with farther on in this letter. But, before pointing this out, I shall say a few words on another point, which according to Mr. Scherer, the gospel supposes, namely— “The knowledge of God.”

What vagueness! what a superficial way of treating serious questions! What is the knowledge of God? One asks oneself if the man who affirms that the gospel supposes this knowledge of God has himself the knowledge of God. “He who loveth not, knoweth not God,” says the apostle John. “ When ye knew not God,” says another apostle, “but now ye have known God;” and elsewhere, “the Gentiles who knew not God.” “ The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not." Because the natural conscience tells a man that he is guilty, and that there is a God of judgment. Does that man know God? He who speaks of a “distinct motion in the soul” as if it was the knowledge of God, ought not to cry out against dogmatism and intellectualism, as evils of a religious life.

I come to things more serious still than the vagueness which reigns in these pages. All the gospel, Mr. Scherer tells us, centers in Jesus Christ.... “If one cuts off the dogma of inspiration, there remains Jesus Christ. What remains to faith? The person of Jesus Christ. He is the beginning and the end, the center and the whole.” Not a word of His work, mark it well. After having cut off the dogma of inspiration, what remains of Scripture? “The history of Jesus Christ.” A history, mark it well, imperfect as the men who wrote it; fur, not having been kept by inspiration, their writings are but fallible accounts with those of other men. But is there nothing but the history of Jesus Christ, nothing of the witness of the Spirit as to the efficacy of His work? Does there remain nothing of it, even if it were not inspired? Did the religious inspiration of the apostles occupy itself with things of no value, when enlarging on the value of the work of Christ?' No, according to Mr. Scherer, there remains nothing but the history of Jesus Christ, the person of Jesus Christ. “It is the beginning and the end, the center and the whole.” For him the work of Christ is a nullity, and he declares himself that it is the suppression of the dogma of inspiration which does this.

But there is something more definite still, and it is with deep sorrow that I revert to some lines of the author, which are simply the denial of the doctrines which are essential to true Christianity. However, it is a mercy of God to have permitted that the effect of the rejection of inspiration should be at once stated by the very man who rejects it, stated immediately, so that the weakest Christian, the very moment he hears such words, should be warned of their bearing. I accept the truth that the person of the Lord is the great object of faith; but there is, on this point, something very ambiguous in the idealism of the author, for I can no longer call it his faith. “Something supreme,” says he, “pierces through His perfection, which is so really human. Sincerely man like us, He has however the consciousness of being above man. Humanity in Him rises up to divinity. He alone knew the Father, with whom He was in a relationship which was unique. He who has seen Him has seen God. All things have been put into His hands—He abides with His own unto the end of the world. The Church worships Him, and prays to Him; it acknowledges that its Savior reigns in the heaven and on the earth, and that the reconciliation is accomplished by Him, because it is accomplished in Him” namely, in the very union of the God and man.” Is He God, the Lord Jesus? Was He God before He became man? What pains, what subterfuges to avoid saying this word? “Humanity in Him rises up to divinity He who has seen Him has seen God.” The Lord said— “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father,” and yet He was not the Father. “Reconciliation was accomplished in Him, namely, in the very union of the God and man.” Why of the God? Was He God? The last phrase which I have just quoted is perhaps the clearest on the subject of the divinity of Jesus; but the union of the God and man. leaves after all, as to the person of Christ, and as to the true divinity of Jesus, a vagueness which nothing elsewhere can destroy. The word of God has nothing like this. “The Word,” it says, “was with God, and the Word was God.” “All things were made by Him, and the Word was made flesh.” It is not humanity which in Him rises up to divinity, a sort of divine moral quality It is God—God, before being man. God who has made the heaven and the earth. “All things were created by the Son, and for the Son,” as the apostle tells us in the epistle to the Colossians. “Thou Lord, in the beginning, past laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thine hands.” One must not deceive oneself as to the meaning of words, and speak to us about dogmas. Was, then, Jesus THE TRUE GOD? He who, before becoming man, created the heavens and the earth—is He THE CREATOR? “To raise humanity to divinity. . . a union of the God and man.” These are things that may be agreeable to man—that exalt ideal man; but was Jesus God outside man? Was He the Creator?

Mr. Scherer leaves us on that point in a painful uncertainty. Now, it is important for a serious man to know if his Savior is God or not, and not to worship one knows not what.

On this capital point of reconciliation Mr. Scherer is by no means obscure. He denies the truth in the clearest manner. Reconciliation was accomplished by Him, because it was accomplished in Him, namely, in the very union of the God and man—of sinful man!

Is it that the reconciliation of sinful man, of a nature in which, according to the Apostle, there is no good, has been effected by the union of this sinful nature with God? And what was this nature which needed to be reconciled? Was it not a sinful nature, and precisely because it was sinful? Is it that which was united to God, or to the God who united Himself to man in Jesus? And further, is it by the union of the God and man that reconciliation is accomplished “God was in Christ reconciling the world into Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.” I quote the passage the nearest to Mr. Scherer's idea, inasmuch as this passage speaks of that which preceded the death of Christ; but this passage shows the complete falseness of Mr. Scherer's doctrine; for if God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, and not imputing their trespasses unto them, humanity was not reconciled by its union with God. God in the man Christ was occupied with this work of love in the midst of men still sinners. Alas! men would not have it, and something else was necessary. It is that which is found at the end of the verse, precisely what Mr. Scherer rejects, namely, as accomplished work, to which the Holy Spirit gives testimony by the Apostles. “He has committed unto us," says the Apostle, “the word of reconciliation.” We beseech men to be reconciled to God, for He hath made Him sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.

Such is reconciliation, according to God: not the reconciliation of humanity towards God in Christ, which is nonsense, because in Christ humanity was without sin, and it was the sinner that needed to be reconciled; but the reconciliation of men as sinners, of us poor miserable ones, estranged from God, and that by a testimony of love, founded no doubt on the person of Christ, but which is founded on His work; not that He mingled humanity in holiness to Himself, but in that He who was holy and who knew not sin was made sin for us.

It is good to put the truth solidly and simply, without equivocation, in face of the extravagant dreams of man, who would make use of the perfection of the person of Christ-man in order to exalt himself under the name of humanity. Christ was made sin because we were sinners. This is the truth we have need of. Call it a dogma if you like; no matter. It is a dogma which, received into the heart, gives peace according to God. Other passages are quite as clear. “Having made peace by the blood of His cross.” And you get now, “He hath reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy, unblameable, and unreproveable in his sight.” We may notice, in reading what precedes, that the work of Christ is distinct from His person.

“But now in Christ Jesus, ye who sometimes were afar off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.” The reader can examine the verses which follow: they fully confirm that the doctrine of reconciliation is by the death of Jesus, and not by the “union of the God and man.”

But Mr. Scherer makes his opposition to the truth still clearer.

“The work of Christ is His person in action, as the person of Christ is His work in power. His death is the culminating point of this work. The sufferings of Golgotha formed besides the historical condition of the struggle of the just with the world, and of the Holy one with evil. But there is here more than a simple law of history. The work of Christ is a work of salvation. Jesus saves us by His partaking of humanity, by His realization of holiness, and by the manifestation in Him of the love and of the pardon of God. In fact, if all men have been made sinners by the disobedience of the first Adam, the power of sin has been broken thus for all by the obedience of the second."

Would one wish for anything clearer to erase expiation from the Christian doctrine. Alas! it will be found.

“Heaven is too much considered as a dwelling place which one may enter by pardon as one enters through a door, and where one is admitted as the consequence of an entirely judicial sentence, which is justification, in virtue of an altogether outward condition, which is the substitution of Christ, and of another condition quite arbitrary, which is faith in this institution: gross notions, which confound with the internal nature of things an imperfect symbol borrowed from the customs of men.”

Mr. Scherer does not believe in reconciliation by the death of Christ; it is accomplished in Him by the union of the God and man. The substitution of Christ is a gross notion! His work does not even find a place in the enumeration that Mr. Scherer makes of that which he says, people call the truths of Christianity.

“The Church,” he says, “would suffice to propagate what is called the truths of Christianity, original sin, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, and the final judgment.”

Need I recall to the reader what a place the death and work of the Savior holds in all the Bible, from the sacrifice of Abel and the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah up to the song of the Apostle and Church in the Revelation? We have seen the Apostles attribute reconciliation to His death, to the death of Him who suffered “the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” He “came to give His life a ransom for many."

“Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many.” , “Who, His own self, bore our sins in his own body on the tree." “He is the propitiation for our sins." “Who was delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification." It is, I think, useless to multiply passages, if the words of Isaiah, of Jesus, of John, of Peter, and of Paul are not enough. As to Paul, we have the declaration that it is of this truth, founded in the person of Christ, that he has been ordained preacher. “For there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time, whereunto I am ordained a preacher." Now, it is not here only a question of inspiration. The ministry of reconciliation was confided to the Apostles.

One of two things: either the Apostle was mistaken in supposing that the ministry of reconciliation was committed to him, and was also mistaken with respect to the means of this reconciliation and the subject of this ministry.... or the doctrine of Mr. Scherer denies Christianity.

Yes, it does DENY CHRISTIANITY.

I admit that the person of Christ is the object of faith. I admit that, in all those who possess it really, this is living faith. But the reconciliation of which you, reader, and myself have need, which is our great business, the whole of our eternal blessing, the Apostle attributes it to one thing and Mr. Scherer to another, yea, rejecting as a gross notion the apostolic doctrine!

“The work of Christ,” Mr. Scherer still tells us, “is His person in action." Did He not suffer? What was His activity when He was forsaken of God? “Jesus saves us by His partaking of humanity and His realization of holiness.” But “without shedding of blood there is no remission." “A propitiation through faith in His blood.” It is a sacrifice offered once for all to God, which replaced all the offerings presented under the law. “He has offered one sacrifice for sins forever.” In a word, the gospel of Mr. Scherer is another gospel which is not one at all.

If the Apostles preached the true gospel, Mr. Scherer does not possess it; if the Christianity which the Apostles taught, which Jesus Himself taught, is the true gospel, that of Mr. Scherer is not; it is on the contrary the denial of it. Mr. Scherer may pretend to be more spiritual, to be fond of more living doctrine. It may be that the theology and the sterile dogmatism of schools have disgusted him. He cannot have a worse opinion of them than myself. Nothing more than theological pedantry extinguishes life, vitiates spiritual judgment, and reeds the flame of pride. The person of Christ, the perfection of His humanity, have an importance that no one can exaggerate; but that alters nothing. It is none the less true that, betrayed by the workings of his intelligence on these points, Mr. Scherer denies Christianity on the principal point of the reconciliation of man with God. Mr. Scherer teaches a false gospel. If he believes from the heart that Christ is the true God, and that He has been it from eternity—if he believes that the Word which created the world became man, he gives himself at least a great deal of trouble not to say it, or to say it in such a way as to satisfy those who do not believe it, and not to appear to share the faith of those who do believe it. Now, it is of importance to know if it is the Creator God who is my Savior; or if I adore one who is not really so. Let people cease speaking of the person of Christ, if they are not sure that Christ is God. A sterile admiration of a beau ideal is not faith in the Son of God.

The doctrine of Mr. Scherer is but a vague and equivocal doctrine on the person of Christ—a complete and formal denial of the gospel preached by the Apostles, and of the teaching of the Holy Spirit on the subject of the work of Christ.

I will but add one instance of the same contempt—or the same negligence of what the Savior said, which I have pointed out as characterizing these letters.

To deny inspiration yet more, Mr. Scherer tells us, “We find (in the biblical accounts), preserved by an authentic tradition, deep traces that Jesus had left in the memory of those who surrounded him.” Very satisfactory means, it must be owned, when it is a question of possessing the words of Him of whom it is said, “He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God.” Happily we have received from the very mouth of Jesus the assurance that, what we possess is not “profound traces preserved by tradition.” “The Comforter, who is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” But be it the Apostles or the Savior Himself, it matters not to Mr. Scherer, provided he hears the “noble accents of the human voice,” and that it is not God who speaks to him.

If human subtlety was to attack divine inspiration, one has but to bless God after all that this attempt has been so soon followed by a denial of the work accomplished by the Savior to reconcile the sinner to God. The believer will understand that it is a question of the foundation of all his hopes, of his salvation, as well as of the glory of his Savior. He will understand, that to deny inspiration is to deny the teaching of the Holy Ghost on the work of Christ, and on salvation; that it is to reject all this as “gross notions,” and reduce his knowledge of a living Christ to “profound traces preserved by authentic traditions.” He will understand that the scheme is another Christianity which is not one, a Christianity which takes the place of the Bible, and that all that remains to him of the volume which he possessed, is only, according to Mr. Scherer, but some treatises containing traditional remembrances, which teach us to do without the doctrine of the Apostles: a God known without a single revelation, and traditions in order to know Him better; a beau ideal of humanity, which raises itself up to divinity; but no more propitiation for the sin which made us guilty before God. Fine inheritance instead of the certain truth of our God and of an accomplished salvation, which glorifies at the same time perfectly both the person and the work of the Savior, which gives perfect peace to a heart fully reconciled, and which introduces as a child into the communion of a God of love.

Faith in the work of Christ does not prevent us from living by Him. It is he who eats His flesh and drinks His blood who dwells in Christ and Christ dwells in him.

Courtesy of BibleTruthPublishers.com. Most likely this text has not been proofread. Any suggestions for spelling or punctuation corrections would be warmly received. Please email them to: BTPmail@bibletruthpublishers.com.

Bible Treasury: Volume 1

Table of Contents

Answers to Queries on Psalm 24

On Mr. Elliott's Apocalyptic Interpretation

Are There Two Half Weeks in the Apocalypse? Correction

The Bible and the Conscience

The Calling of the Disciples

The Canon of Scripture and the Various Divisions of the Books

Change No Cure

Christ Dwelling in Our Hearts by Faith

Christian Love and Union

What Is the Church? Do the Old Testament Saints Form Part of It? Part 1

What Is the Church? Do the Old Testament Saints Form Part of It? Part 2

What Is the Church? Do the Old Testament Saints Form Part of It? Part 3

The Coming of the Lord and the Translation of the Church

Criticism on the Text of the New Testament: No. 1

Criticism on the Text of the New Testament: No. 2

Notes of a Lecture on Daniel 2:19-49 and Daniel 7: Part 1

Notes of a Lecture on Daniel 2:19-49 and Daniel 7: Part 2

David and Solomon

The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved

A Few Words on Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon

The Effect

Notes of a Lecture on Ephesians 1

Even So, Come, Lord Jesus.

Extracts From Correspondence: Differences Between the Moral Activities of Society and the Church

Extracts From Correspondence: Keeping Pure in the Midst of Evil

Ezekiel

A Fair Show in the Flesh

Faith and Its Fruits: Poetry

Faith's Resting Place

Faith's Resting Place

The Basket of First-Fruits

Notes of a Lecture on First Thessalonians 1

Fragment

Fragment

Fragments Christ's Lordship

German Rationalists and the Bible: Fragment

God's Word, Not the Opinion of the Day

On the Epistle to the Hebrews

Hope

How Far Did Christ's Advent Fulfil Prophecy?

Introductory Address

Is Not Obedience Too Much Forgotten When You Insist on Justification by Faith?

Is the Manifestation to Be Before Brethren of the Lord Simply?

People and Land of Israel: 1. Jews After the Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus

People and Land of Israel: 2. Jerusalem

People and Land of Israel: 3. Recent Travels in the Holy Land and Neighboring Countries, Part 1

People and Land of Israel: 3. Recent Travels in the Holy Land and Neighboring Countries, Part 2

People and Land of Israel: 4. Travels in Sinai and Palestine

People and Land of Israel: 5. Morality of the Jews

People and Land of Israel: 6. Place of Wailing Jerusalem

Job 33

On the Book of Job

Joy

The Kingdom of Heaven

The Languages of the Bible

Latter-Day Saints

Life and Righteousness

The Lord Jesus in John 11-12

The Lord Returning From the Wedding

Luke 19-21

Some Account of Manuscripts

Notes of a Lecture on Matthew 13

Melchizedek

The Millenarian Question: Part 1

The Millenarian Question: Part 2

The Millenarian Question: Part 3

The Mind of Christ: 1 Cor. 2

A Few Words on Modern Criticism

Modern Hegelianism Compared With Brahminism

Not to Company

Notes Du Nouveau Testament: Review

Notes of the Month: Charges Against Mr. Davidson

Notes on Scripture: 1. Communion of Abraham With God

Notes on Scripture: 10. John 17:14

Notes on Scripture: 11. Psalm 16

Notes on Scripture: 12. John 10

Notes on Scripture: 2. Abraham and Lot

Notes on Scripture: 3. Jesus the Author and Finisher of Faith